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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23219626">SUDO</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/felldownthelist/pseuds/felldownthelist'>felldownthelist</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bare Metal Fan [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Author Writing For Themselves, Computers, Gen, Large Family Dynamics, Linux, Rehab, Sobriety, When Life Gives You Lemons But You Don't Know Any Lemonade Recipies, keeping secrets, the internet - Freeform, weird sibling relationships</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:01:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>22,496</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23219626</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/felldownthelist/pseuds/felldownthelist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)<br/>Kernel 2.6.27.12-170 on an i686<br/>login:</p><p>Klaus stares. Then he swallows. Then he starts typing.</p><p>login as: root<br/>root@modecker’s password:<br/>Linux modecker 2.6.27.12-170-generic #1 SMP Fri Dec 24 04:45:36 UTC 2019 i686</p><p>Fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fucking fuck. If he gets caught… fuck it. Never mind. Focus. Shit. Fuck.</p><p>Klaus feels…</p><p>                       … kinda high.</p><p>--</p><p>Part of a series that is more or less a love letter to the internet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Klaus Hargreeves &amp; Everyone, Klaus Hargreeves &amp; Rehab, Klaus Hargreeves &amp; Substance Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves &amp; The Internet, The Internet &amp; Bad Crime Stuff, The Internet &amp; Fanfiction, The Internet &amp; Nice People</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Bare Metal Fan [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1525859</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>119</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. SMART</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set kind of over the top of every other thing in this series. Could it be read alone? Could it be not read at all? Only time will tell.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)<br/></em> <em>Kernel 2.6.27.12-170 on an i686<br/></em> <em>login:</em></p><p>Klaus stares. Then he swallows. Then he starts typing.</p><p><em>login as: root<br/></em> <a href="mailto:root@modecker"> <em>root@</em> </a> <em><a href="mailto:root@modecker">modecker</a>’s password:<br/></em> <em>Linux modecker 2.6.27.12-170-generic #1 SMP Fri Dec 24 04:45:36 UTC 2019 i686</em></p><p>Fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fucking fuck. If he gets caught… fuck it. Never mind. Focus. Shit. Fuck.</p><p>Klaus feels…</p><p>                           … kinda high.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>EIGHT MONTHS AGO</p><p> </p><p>“I’m just saying,” Klaus says, twirling spaghetti around his fork and letting it drop off for the fourth time now, heedless of Allison’s warning glance. “Like. <em>Y</em><em>ou</em> spend a lot of time on the thing. The computer. I know there’s that forum but still. Hey! Do you remember how much we used to hate those trips to the research places and stuff? You think it was just because it was all old white men doing the talking when we secretly knew it was actually all those ladies of colour and distinction they wouldn’t let out in public doing the hard work?”</p><p>“Klaus,” Diego says. “Could you just eat your food?”</p><p>“Hey,” Klaus puts his hands up, including his fork. Spaghetti drips down his wrist. Oops. “I’m making an observation as a dumbass white boy.”</p><p>“You are a dumbass white boy,” Diego mutters to himself, while Ben, behind him, says,</p><p>“Could you just eat it? I’m on edge watching you, man,” and Allison says,</p><p>“You seem a little twitchy. And you’re not actually eating that. And you didn’t eat lunch.”</p><p>Okay, alright. His leg is jiggling in place hard enough to rattle the knife left abandoned by his plate, okay Klaus can own up to that. And he has a bit of a –</p><p>“But do you remember when Bill Gates said that nobody would ever need more than, I can’t even remember, and now – and, wait is memory RAM? Was <em>that</em> the joke on that show I watched last night?”</p><p>“Klaus!”</p><p>“What?” he asks Allison, throwing his hands up again, a little more vigorously than before. Spaghetti flies over his shoulder. Klaus resolutely does not look at it.</p><p>“You – listen to yourself! You sound… I mean. You have a lot of energy right now. I think you need an outlet. Is all I’m saying.”</p><p>Diego points a fork at him rudely. “<em>Not</em> more time following me around the gym, either.”</p><p>“Like, a mental outlet,” Allison continues.</p><p>“That’s more effort than a crossword,” Diego adds, judgmentally.</p><p>“Excuse you both!” Klaus says. “I have an outlet. I knit. And I started that new dance routine. From that show. You know. I’m just asking about computer things. I can barely remember any of the stuff we were taught now, which is stupid.”</p><p>“Your amygdala was busy at the time,” Diego suggests.</p><p>“Give him money,” Klaus demands to Allison. “He remembered a brain part. He did a listen.”</p><p>“<em>Also</em> your SMART objectives say three meals a day,” Diego says, slightly meaner. “Every day. I’m telling Paul on Tuesday you’re not following them.” He eyeballs Klaus. “It’s because you’re just lounging around not doing anything unless we do it. There, I said it, eat your fucking dinner. And then get. A. Hobby.”</p><p>Oh. Klaus looks at his plate. He really, really doesn’t want it. Also… right. Okay. Now he feels a little bit shit.</p><p>“Hey, don’t make that face,” Diego is saying, and Allison is butting in,</p><p>“You could possibly have phrased that better,” and Diego is snapping,</p><p>“Which one of us does family therapy? Me. Which one of us cares enough to actually fucking <em>say</em> anything? Me. Shut up,” and Allison is using her outraged tone to counter,</p><p>“Are you seriously telling me to shut up?”</p><p>“Is that seriously what just came out of my mouth?”</p><p>“Are you-”</p><p>“I want yogurt!” Klaus blurts, at maybe twice his usual speaking volume, to try and distract them.</p><p>It works. They both stare at him.</p><p>And then Diego just... stands up and leaves. Allison frowns after him, expression displeased.</p><p>“Raspberry,” Klaus adds, so that she looks at him again.</p><p>“You know where the refrigerator is,” Allison informs him.</p><p>Diego stomps back in as abruptly as he left.</p><p>“Hey,” he says, sharp. He stalks over and dumps a big book in Klaus’ lap. It hits him right where it really did not need to. To say that Klaus winces is charitable.</p><p>“Fucker,” Klaus gasps.</p><p>“Read up,” Diego says. “You <em>need</em> a <em>hobby</em>.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Aaaaaalmost a year ago to the week:</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Something’s about to give, Klaus can feel it in his bones.</p><p>Also his guts. Also his teeth. MDMA is just not the party drug he remembers.</p><p>What the fuck was it this time? Oh yeah. He was bored. He was bored and there’s a lot of world out there and he’d spent all of ten minutes thinking about actually cleaning up his act and doing something with his life – well. There’s too much fucking choice, isn’t there. He should get a job! Do some philanthropy! Become, like, a doctor or something? Except that leads to thinking about previous life choices and school and the world and Klaus just isn’t built for this anxiety, he needs to stop, and be – what was it? Carefree! Yeah! Just for a while! It’ll be fine, he can try again tomorrow.</p><p>Klaus has tried and tried to quit using, and every fucking time so far managed to fuck it up. He half thinks he doesn’t want to quit. The problem is that he also thinks that he doesn’t want to keep using. The other problem is that he’s starting to feel really, ridiculously unwell all of the time, and like, he might have cancer or something shit and he wouldn’t have a fucking clue because fucking fucking fuck.</p><p>He’d even tried it for fucking <em>Dave</em>, and staying sober after 24 hours – nightmare, nightmare, nightmare. Not happening.</p><p>The ghost world has become untenable again anyway, and he doesn’t really have anybody to talk to or turn to; and if he did he thinks he might just start screaming at them, which. Well. It’s never really gone down that well before now, so.</p><p>Klaus is tired. Klaus feels like shit. Absolutely nothing has been fun for a very long time, and all in all: Klaus kind of wants out.</p><p>He can’t kill himself, so. Option two:</p><p>Klaus is going back to rehab.</p><p>Using dead old Reggie’s money he checks himself in somewhere he’s never been before on account of it being even more fucking expensive than average. The – new build, <em>very</em> <em>private</em> – facility has very, <em>very</em> few dead folks haunting its hallways. More’s to celebrate there’s no religious cant, which is also attractive. Means no AA or NA or any of that shit that’s never worked out before. This kind of feels like a last ditch attempt so. New or bust, he figures. If that’s a phrase. It doesn’t feel like a phrase.</p><p>He drinks a little to take the edge off before he makes it all the way onto the locked down premises and just succeeds in making himself even more maudlin. He regrets everything as he signs away thirty days worth of rights. He wishes he’d chugged the whole bottle instead of the quarter of it that was left. He doesn’t even like gin! What a shitty choice.</p><p>Most of all, though, and what actually keeps the pen moving across pages of signatures and dates, is the craving; he just craves craves <em>crave</em><em>s</em> being locked up in a <em>n</em><em>ice</em> place with people that are actively <em>motivated</em> to make and keep him clean. He is desperate to just be surrounded by people who will pay him attention, take care of withdraw for him, explain the mysteries of the world – like why people like coffee so much, what the fuck is up with that? – and just make him be something resembling healthy.</p><p> </p><p>It’s a crappy, awful, quiet ride. Even Ben is somewhat scarce as Klaus shits his guts out, endures his B vitamin injections and swallows all the other gross supplements, sweats and sweats and tears at his nails and snaps at staff and <em>crie</em><em>s</em>, and wishes he had anybody in his life that he didn’t have to pay these exorbitant fees who will <em>keep</em> him locked up and safe like this, <em>keep</em> him away from drugs and alcohol and stand steadfast while he lies or yells or pleads with them for fucking <em>anything</em> to get a hit, no matter what, when this is done. It doesn’t feel like something he can do by himself, frankly, no matter how clean he gets in here.</p><p>He has an assigned case worker; and the guy had just sat with him while he shivered and lied and prevaricated and tried to be distracting and everything else, in the first week. Ditching the physical dependency, they’d said. It had been a special kind of hell.</p><p>The second week had been an abrupt new hell, that he’d kind of needed, desperately, since ‘Nam, to just give him something; anything, that wasn’t fucking substance abuse to start dealing with his life.</p><p>It had been full of sheets of paper covered in things he didn’t want to think about, with dumb action plans written alongside. And <em>goals</em>.</p><p>Klaus has a Hierarchy of Values taped up next to his bed. Midway down the list is “fuck up dead bitches”.</p><p>His case worker hadn’t commented on it, but had given him a wink and a gold star.</p><p> </p><p>By week three, of note! The tremors have let up.</p><p>Also, he is somewhat blown away to receive some personal mail.</p><p>When he opens it after breakfast – two eggs with a bun! Klaus is <em>living</em> – it’s turns out that it’s a letter, from Allison of all people, c/o the Academy – which means that someone there knows where he is (Diego, he imagines, must have returned back there then for god only knows what reason... although he guesses he wouldn’t put it past Five to be stalking them all just for the sake of it). It contains a server address, account details and password. It looks, very, very strangely, like instructions to get into an email account. Week three comes with internet access on a facility computer. It’s got parental controls or whatever on the browser but Klaus doesn’t really give a shit since he barely uses his daily hour. However, logging on to find an email waiting with a link to some utter garbage from what sounded like old people who used to be Umbrella Academy fans, subsequently Klaus finds himself spending the whole sixty minutes clicking around, reading trash. And it is. These people seem to be fans of Vanyas book.</p><p>He’s been vaguely calm the past few days, but, somewhat mysteriously, his mood dips and by the time he’s going to sleep, looking at his dumb lists and goals for the week, Klaus is back to wanting to just… he doesn’t know. Pop a pill? Chase a dragon? Maybe? Maybe not. He journals it, doodles some pictures of laser beams blowing up the moon alongside the words.</p><p> </p><p>Between making lists, classes, therapy, group sessions and downtime Klaus does do a little browsing of the forums Allison sent him the link for. He rolls his eyes imagining exactly how much she would love this; half expects a post declaring “Allison Hargreeves here!” with some outfit choices and movie recommendations or something.Instead, somewhat inexplicably, a user with the handle DIEGOHARGREEVES appears to be doing a stunningly accurate impression of Klaus’ actual brother.</p><p>Klaus kind of misses him. He makes a handle (K-HOLE! So funny. So <em>topical</em>) and starts passive-aggressively commenting on stuff after him. He maybe writes one of those short story things detailing why Diego’s a shit for not visiting, because this sibling will probably actually read it and maybe give him some attention back.</p><p>He does not expect a whole entire email to arrive the next day.</p><p>FROM: GrumpyGoth<br/>YO. Are you hounding me on purpose? If you wanted me to visit you should have said, not just told me <em>bye bye see you when you die</em> when you fell out of my car. That shit was pretty fucking clear cut.</p><p>Klaus is in a bad mood, suddenly, for no reason whatsoever. He cracks his knuckles and suddenly a vivid image of a behaviour wheel flashes before his eyes, ‘actions!’ and ‘consequences!’.</p><p>Fuck it.</p><p>TO: GrumpyGoth<br/>dear shithead. thanks for not noticing i spent fifteen years trying to die slowly and horribly. you may console yourself with the knowledge there was also total missing content/mention/anything from anybody else (except VANYAS BOOK which i know you looooove !!!!!) i am as unsurprised as the next motherfucker in here that nobody wants to visit or turn up to fucking anything or have anything to do with me because as vanya wrote i have always been a difficult child, acting out and annoying you all terribly, so very sorry, don’t feel bad, enjoy living your best life and also fuck you because</p><p>And then Klaus stops, abruptly, and blinks, and then in, a fit of complete and utter self sabotage, hits the send button.</p><p>Fuck, shit.</p><p>That was… <em>awful</em>. Well, Diego is never going to speak to him ever again, now. Klaus has thrown the one remaining person in the world he could ask for a ride into the garbage. Was it so bad? He chances a look back at the screen.</p><p>Klaus exits the browser hastily. He’s got the shakes again, a little bit. They weren’t meant to be happening any more.</p><p>Klaus does not utilise his daily computer hour again.</p><p> </p><p>Two days later, he’s passing near to the main greeting area, walking back from outdoor activity group – Klaus can now identify a starling, because they have <em>bling bling!</em> – when he hears a familiar voice. And it’s not Nico, who coordinates the guests, although he’s talking, too:</p><p>“I can’t divulge that; visitation is weekend only or family therapy sessions and it has to be pre-booked, this is for patient safety,” Nico is explaining, in the voice he starts using when he’s had to say it more than once.</p><p>“Well he’s not talking to me, so here we are,” <em>Diego’</em><em>s voice</em> is responding, and when Klaus peeks around the corner, he sees <em>Diego</em> practically draped over Nico’s desk – in a manner that Klaus imagines Diego imagines is somehow becoming. Also – what?</p><p>“I mean, you’re not really helping yourself, man,” Nice says, lightly, and the whole tone is relaxed and <em>what is </em><em>Diego</em><em> doing here</em>? Has he come to kick Klaus’ ass in person? “Look, you’ve got to have an appointment okay? And I really can’t give out medical information, so please stop asking.”</p><p>Diego huffs at that, sighs and runs his hand through his air. “Okay,” he says. “Strictly out of curiosity what happens if I just walk on in -” he gestures to the corridor separating them, and Klaus immediately hides like a coward.</p><p>“You get escorted off away from the premises by security.” Nico says, still pleasant.</p><p>“I don’t see security,” Diego tells him.</p><p>“We’re here, don’t worry,” says a voice that sounds like it’s coming from an intercom or something. Klaus doesn’t know, he can’t see them any more.</p><p>There’s a beat, and then his brother says, “I’m leaving my number. If Klaus doesn’t want me to come back tomorrow, let me know. Otherwise – it’s a Saturday, right? And this is me making an appointment.”</p><p>“I’ll let you know either way,” Nico is saying, and Klaus turns and walks in the direction of the rec room, where the computers live, because the horrid feeling in his gut that’s been gnawing at him for a couple of days now is ramping back up and – surely Diego would have replied before he drove all the way out here? Or maybe there’s a rant on the forum on one of his mean posts, or maybe – maybe nothing. He can’t shake the bad thoughts. At least knowing how mad his brother is would be better than this uncertainty.</p><p>When he gets into his inbox, there are two new emails, which is unexpected. The first one is from <em>Allison</em> and he reads it first. It’s short. It just says, ‘<em>Hey. Enjoying writing fanfiction about yourselves? I’m actually impressed with the quality of your work. Kudos, boys, kudos.</em>’ Klaus doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s code or something.</p><p>He opens the next one.</p><p>FROM: GrumpyGoth<em><br/></em>OKAY you’re upset I get it. You’re in rehab so I’m gonna let that craptalk slide. I’m guessing that shit is rough. I’m driving up tomorrow.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>OH. That wasn’t… ohhhh.</p><p>Klaus wants rather abruptly to run back out into the foyer. He also thinks he might do something ridiculous like try to hug his brother or something else that would risk pissing him off all over again though, so he stays put.</p><p>His knee jiggles. He reads through the four sentences four more times before he shuts the thing down.</p><p>Next up is art class. Klaus feels pretty good by that point; he paints a bunch of starlings hanging out on a branch.</p><p> </p><p>When he signs the visitation sheet before dinner, Nico asks him if he wants supervision. Klaus doesn’t get why.</p><p> </p><p>When Saturday happens Klaus is <em>ready</em>. He’s got lines. He’s got an action plan. He’s got back up things to say in case they start arguing. He’s… weirdly nervous about the whole thing, actually. Nobody has ever visited him mid-rehab before, and this time he’s actually trying and making big lists of stuff he actually kind of wants out of life now that it looks like he might soon be experiencing it in full colour and HD and whatnot. He also doesn’t really know how to talk to his family at all and now they’re visiting.</p><p>His lines are kind of thrown to the breeze when Diego actually turns up. “Holy shit,” is the first thing Diego says, on spotting him.</p><p>Okay, Klaus was wrong, he wasn’t ready at all! – what was that for? How the hell do they greet each other? Should he be proving sobriety somehow? Should he – do they shake hands? Diego comes at him and he’s too distracted by his own thoughts to move, and then he’s being lifted off his feet by his brother, who is holding him up with two arms clamped around his middle. “You dick,” Diego says, keeping him off the ground. “I thought you’d be all sick and crap.” He sets him back down none too gently, and Klaus tumbles forwards and has to catch himself on Diego’s collarbone.</p><p>“I’m the opposite of sick,” he says, still kind of ironically unable to think straight, “I’m practically radiant.”</p><p>“You look so good,” Diego tells him. “What are they feeding you?”</p><p>“Uh, meals,” Klaus says. “Hi.”</p><p>“Hi,” Diego sort of huffs back at him. “Jesus, you look so much better than last time I saw you.”</p><p>“How tactful <em>you</em> are,” Klaus scoffs. “Come on,” he says, suddenly remembering his plan. “We have a list of stuff to do.”</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t quite regret letting Paul meet Diego at the family and support network group session, but it’s kind of close.</p><p>“Yeah, where am I signing up for family therapy?” Diego barrels on, after he’s had the introduction. He’s holding a fucking pamphlet. “You need a support network, I got this bro,” he says, waving it. “These people are the actual shit, huh.”</p><p>Whatever the fuck’s gotten into him, Klaus does not know. He tries not to be too obvious with the crying.</p><p> </p><p>Diego comes back six more times. They have visitation on Saturdays and then he comes to four of Klaus’ family therapy slots. Paul keeps giving him literature and lecturing him about shit like being a ‘lighthouse’, and not trying to ‘captain’ Klaus’ ‘ship’ - which sounds hella inappropriate, but pointing this out doesn’t phase either of them.</p><p>Klaus tries his best a couple of times to ‘sabotage his recovery efforts’ (thanks, Paul) by ‘being a little shit’ (thanks, Diego), and it doesn’t work. Diego just stays, even if they have a fight he just sits and listens and doesn’t threaten him or even look embarrassed. It’s embarrassing for <em>Klaus</em>, after the second or third time of accidentally trying to wind him up, because at that point Paul decides to ask <em>Diego</em> what he thinks Klaus is doing it for.</p><p>And Diego says, kind of bluntly, “when we were growing up everything was a competition. Nobody helped anybody with anything. Or they got told off for cheating.” He shrugs, looking pissed off. “I guess that shit sticks.”</p><p>Paul asks him what that means in context.</p><p>When Diego says, “Idiot. I’m here, I’m helping, there’s nobody waiting to shove you in a mausoleum on your own again when we’re done, because Dad’s dead,” Klaus wails uncontrollably for around twenty minutes. Diego apologises repeatedly and then puts his arms out like they’re going to hug, and Klaus isn’t actually that sure how to do that and then trying to hug is so horribly awkward that they end up laughing hysterically on the couch in Paul’s stupid little office until Klaus’ hiccups have stopped. Paul is actually <em>making notes</em>, Klaus never wants to see them ever.</p><p> </p><p>It takes him until his last week to gather up the guts to ask Diego if he’d mind being his babysitter, if only for his first week out in the wild. The idea of leaving is terrifying.</p><p>Diego agrees and punches him in the arm for asking. Staff don’t seem to understand why this makes him so happy, and call Paul, who says that they have stuff to work on, whatever he means by that.</p><p> </p><p>Getting out, signed off, signed up to ongoing therapy sessions is wild enough. Being collected by Diego is a complete mind blower.</p><p>The two of them moving in with Allison is the next to last in the list of unexpected surprises.</p><p>The very last surprise is <em>staying</em> <em>sober</em>.</p><p>Klaus has his SMART recovery objectives pinned to his bedroom wall, his ABC problem solving worksheets in a pile underneath his CRISIS/RECOVERY handbook, his cost benefit analysis sheets on his night stand, his change plan on his bedroom door, and his hierarchy of values under his pillowcase because he wants it near and dear to his psyche, and that includes when he’s asleep.</p><p> </p><p>So. Almost a year ago to the week, Klaus made his first tactical manoeuvre to becoming tentatively sober in the real world, for the first time in almost two decades.</p><p>But.</p><p> </p><p>Back tooooo… what was it? Right. Eight months ago:</p><p> </p><p>“Not that I don’t appreciate the drop kick to the nuts, but what the hell am I meant to do with this?” Klaus groans, holding up the enormous textbook that Diego has unceremoniously dumped on him.</p><p>“You’re complaining you can’t remember anything and don’t understand computers,” Diego tells him, walking toward the kitchen. “Cyber crime is on the up on the internet. You could do something good, if you can be bothered to crack it.”</p><p>“Ha, crack,” is Klaus’ response.</p><p>Diego walks back into the room with a raspberry yogurt and a spoon, and then looks back at Allison with his eyebrows all funny, and Klaus thinks about that for a moment and then is distracted by the smell of bolognaise by his face. He looks and realises his arm his still covered in spaghetti sauce. What the hell. He takes a big lick just to be gross.</p><p>Diego just rolls his eyes and exchanges his plate for the yogurt, taking it away to the kitchen.</p><p>“Diego,” Allison admonishes, and Klaus has no idea why. She looks at Klaus for a moment, seems to be thinking on something. “I mean,” she says, “I know you were never that into them,” she says, “but did you know there’s games and stuff on the computer now too?”</p><p>Urgh. “I was never like Diego or Five or, freaking, Luther,” Klaus tells her, exasperated. “And besides. Don’t you need some brains for that kind of adventure? Pretty sure mine all melted out of my nose via PCP. Or maybe it was the crack,” he contemplates. “Or the molly. Or the alcohol to be honest, that shit’s just straight up bad for brain functioning. How many crosswords do you think I was getting done when I was wasted?” Ben begins smacking himself in the face repeatedly in Klaus’ periphery. He waves his hands some more and ignores his beloved deceased bro. “None, that’s how many! ‘Grub that eight spat out’?” Klaus gestures to Allison’s plate. “Not a chance. I don’t know if I could have even <em>spell</em><em>ed</em> ‘spaghetti’ back when, uh.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Diego says, coming back in. He has an A4 piece of paper in his hand.</p><p>“Oh, God,” Klaus says. “I mean good. Thank you. Um.”</p><p>“Objectives,” Diego informs him, handing him the pre-printed form. Klaus has stacks of them in a ring binder, fills out one a week. Sometimes an extra one if he ends up having a less decent week. “I’m not telling you what to put.” Diego slides a pen over. “Write down ‘reading that book’.”</p><p> </p><p>It’s a ridiculously good feeling to have somebody give a shit.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Snoop</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>‘Many GNU commands have the same names as their traditional Unix counterparts, but with a new range of options’ says the – fucking massive ass – book. Thanks Diego. This book is a week objective, though. Objectives are serious.</p>
<p>This is objective number three. His three other objectives include eating three meals a day, practising dead people shit with Ben for thirty minutes a day and walking thirty thousand steps, according to the little pedometer hanging precariously off of his outfit du jour. Klaus has labelled the week ‘Allison themed’.</p>
<p>He sticks his tongue between his teeth and picks out on the keyboard,</p>
<p>
  <em>$ ls --help | less</em>
</p>
<p>He gets,</p>
<p>
  <em>Usage: ls [OPTION] . . . [FILE] . . .<br/></em>
  <em>List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).<br/></em>
  <em>Sort entries alphabetically if none of the -cftusux not –sort.</em>
</p>
<p>So! His memory isn’t so bad after all! Who knew thiamine could do such a good job at unfucking it!</p>
<p>Sort of vaguely interested in the list of options, Klaus picks a few random files in the directory to investigate with his newfound list of commands. Continuing on the three theme, he’s logged in as Allison – because it’s technically her computer, and so he’s technically in <em>her</em> home directory. There are a few subfolders called things like “taxes” and “stuff”.</p>
<p>Klaus has never done taxes! What an opportunity! He can’t wait to see what they actually look like.</p>
<p>Moving into the folder, he gets another folder called “2019” and a layer under that “drafts”. “drafts” contains several text files with names like “tuesday” and “4pm”. Klaus decides he’ll start with a text file that was last edited a month ago, called “mornings”. He goes to open it, using <em>vi</em> because according to this book he doesn’t have to type the entirety of the word <em>vim</em> any more. What a saving. Klaus remembers about half maybe of the <em>vim</em> commands. He liked them because they were unnecessarily complicated in the opinion of his nine year old self. The <em>Pico</em> thing had been so much more boring.</p>
<p>The text editor opens the file. And… he’s not, like – an expert in taxes? But – “mornings” doesn’t actually look like taxes. At all.</p>
<p>
  <em>$ vi home/taxes/2019/drafts/mornings</em>
</p>
<p><em>The sunrise lit up the sand where the waves had yet to touch. The beach was peaceful so early in the morning, the sound of the ocean a calm backdrop to the rhythmic thudding of the lone jogger finishing up his morning routine. The air was cool enough that he had a shirt on, which made for an unusual sight. By the time the jogger made it back to the lone cabin, the smell of coffee was wafting out onto the breeze.<br/></em>‘<em>How far did you run?’ called a voice from inside, the open door allowing the sound to carry. ‘You were gone so early.’<br/></em>‘<em>Couldn’t sleep,’ the jogger returned. A figure emerged from the cabin carrying two steaming cups.<br/></em>‘<em>Me either,’ the second man said, handing a cup over. ‘Too many dreams.’<br/></em>‘<em>The moon?’<br/></em>‘<em>Always the moon.’<br/></em>‘<em>You made coffee again.’<br/></em>‘<em>It tastes better in Hawaii,’ the second man s</em><em>aid</em><em>. ‘Cheers.’<br/></em>‘<em>Cheers.’<br/></em><em>They looked at each other for a half second too long before focusing back on the ocean.<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>finish this some time post under @noobslasher account<br/>~<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>~</em></p>
<p>Klaus blinks. Then he hits escape and then he types <em>:q</em> to get back out. <em>Then</em>, he opens another random text file without looking at the date stamp, this one called “eightthirty”.</p>
<p>“What are you reading?” Ben calls, from where he’s perched on the couch to look out of the window.</p>
<p>“Shh,” Klaus flaps a hand at him. “Nothing. Go back to your bird watching.” Also leave Klaus alone for a hot minute while he figures out what the heck.</p>
<p>~<br/><em>Add-on to The Fish Tale<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>Diego weighed up his options. He could just stick with Allison who he loved very much and admired a great deal, or he could do something else. He could follow his heart. Life as a merman was hard, and the Underwater Protection Squad had been through so much. They had been through so much together. He couldn’t deny his feelings any longer, it was too heavy on his shoulders to not say anything.<br/></em><em>As they all swam away from each other one last time, Allison went to take his hand. He pulled away. She looked at him curiously. ‘I can’t, I have just realised that I have to follow my heart,’ Diego said. Allison looked pointedly over at Luther, who was leaving, slowly, across the sea floor. ‘You mean...’ she said.</em></p>
<p>“Klaus,” Ben says, right in his ear, making him jump. “Are you writing this? Because I don’t know how Diego is gonna react to that. This is way weirder than pairing all his socks wrong last week, dude.”</p>
<p>“What? No!” Klaus debates the effort of making his brother corporeal, just to be able to shove him away. “Absolutely not,” he adds, “also I don’t think he’s even noticed his socks are wrong. I put ‘Tuesday’ and ‘Friday’ together and saw him just <em>wearing</em> them the other day, like he does not care at all, it’s awfully disappointing.” Also - “Also! Does this read like the utter poetry I’d write about these two for the fan board… like, oh Jesus God.” he sighs. “I’m not in this alone right? Are you reading this too?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Ben confirms. “Scroll down, come on.”</p>
<p>‘<em>Yes,’ Diego said. ‘I can’t lie to myself any more.’<br/></em>‘<em>Oh Diego,’ Allison said and smiled at him. ‘I’m so happy. I thought you were going to deny your feelings forever.’ Diego looked at her in surprise.<br/></em>‘<em>You’re okay with it?’ He asked.<br/></em>‘<em>Of course,’ Allison said. ‘I want you to be happy. And I can see that what you have is truly true love.’<br/></em>‘<em>What if he doesn’t feel the same?’ Diego said, even though deep down he knew it couldn’t be just one-sided.<br/></em>‘<em>He does</em><em>. I can see it in both </em><em>of </em><em>your eyes,’ Allison said. <br/></em>‘<em>I guess I’m going to get my man,’ Diego said, not quite believing his </em><em>own</em><em> bravery.<br/></em>‘<em>I’ll always love you,’ Allison told him, and swam away. Diego watched and felt no regrets. He turned to where Luther was almost gone. Diego was a fast swimmer. He could catch him.<br/></em>‘<em>Luther,’ Diego called out as the larger man swam away. ‘Luther stop! We have to talk!’<br/></em><em>Luther stopped, up ahead. He just turned his head a small way to look back. ‘Why are you following me?’ He called back.<br/></em>‘<em>Because I have to follow my heart,’ Diego called. ‘</em><em>I’m deeply in love with you.’<br/></em>‘<em>No, you aren’t,’ Luther said straight away. ‘This morning you called me a doofus. You said my fins are weird. And you make fun of my poetry.’<br/></em>‘<em>Because I was afraid,’ Diego implored. ‘It was stupid of me to think I could ever stop having feelings for you. Just by being rude all of the time.’<br/></em>‘<em>You aren’t rude all of the time,’ said Luther, ‘I kept that seashell you found. And gave to me.’<br/></em>‘<em>Remember when I saved you from Doctor Octopod? When I thought you were going to die? I was so in love with you then.’<br/></em>‘<em>I remember you cut my electroshock net open first if that’s what you mean.’<br/></em>‘<em>I love you more than any merperson in the whole ocean.’<br/></em>‘<em>Diego,’ Luther said, visibly moved. ‘Does this mean that you want to come with me? To Hawaii?’<br/></em>‘<em>I don’t want to be anywhere else but by your side ever again,’ Diego said firmly.<br/></em><em>Luther held out his hand. Diego took it, shaking with nerves. <br/></em>‘<em>I have a secret,’ Luther said nervously. ‘I think that I might have been in love with you this whole time too.’<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>~<br/></em><em>post under @minnymouse account<br/></em><em>~</em></p>
<p>Klaus finishes reading and finds himself just staring at the text on the screen.</p>
<p>“Klaus,” Ben says. “Um.”</p>
<p>Klaus flips out of the terminal and opens a web browser.</p>
<p>Then he opens those Umbrella forums, which is an easy task seeing as they’re bookmarked, and then he has a quick search for the user “minnymouse”.</p>
<p>He finds eight posts. All of them look like very short bits of fanfiction or whatever it’s called. And all of them are in the section LUTHERXDIEGO.</p>
<p>Oh his fucking god.</p>
<p>“Allison you little <em>troll</em>,” Klaus whispers, somewhat in awe, because it’s the only real option here – there’s no way this was Diego’s doing – and also what the fuck.</p>
<p>“Allison, Allison, Allison,” Ben says gravely, sounding like he’s actually kind of impressed, and then he breaks out into whooping laughter, holding his head and stomping away. “Oh my god. She’s as bad as Vanya, except Vanya’s book was like true mean facts and of course Allison is writing fictitious missives. Oh my god. Tell me there’s none about anybody else?”</p>
<p>“Oh, noooooo!” Klaus hadn’t considered. “Uh.” He clicks around a bit. “Nope, I think it’s just, uh, them.” He doesn’t know that at all, but he kind of doesn’t want to know right at this second.</p>
<p>This subsection of the forum has ridiculously huge threads full of conspiracy theories, but it’s the fact that they’re largely about Luther and Diego being in secret romantic exile in Hawaii – and Klaus has <em>heard</em> Diego laughing his head off about this particular idea but has never thought to even wonder about where the stories keep coming from. Allison! Holy shit.</p>
<p>Klaus is saving this information for a rainy day.</p>
<p>Although…</p>
<p>He copies the link of the mermen story and shoves it in an email to Diego pretending he’s talking about something else, so that Diego will click it. It’s surprisingly fun hearing him pretend to retch over these stories.</p>
<p>While he’s in his inbox, he reads a group message from Five complaining about email security certificates or some such. Klaus doesn’t get what he means. He’ll ask later.</p>
<p>He has a bunch of spam, apart from that, and some of it is kind of interesting.</p>
<p>“Click here for hot eightee- nope,” Klaus hits the ‘x’. “Next. You have won an iPhone. A what?” He considers clicking.</p>
<p>Footsteps behind him indicate another person is going to be looking at his screen shortly, and they don’t sound particularly dead this time, so Klaus flips back to the terminal, out of the text editor and hits enter a few times before typing <em>ls --help</em> again to get a nice long list of text that isn’t the file that he just read. And then sets the book on his lap. Act casual! Success.</p>
<p>“Hey man, you’re reading it! Doing a crash course?” Diego’s voice asks, and then the footsteps stop. Klaus determinedly schools his face and then turns to face him. “Going full terminal?” Diego says, peering at the monitor. “Damn. Okay. Very uh. Old school.”</p>
<p>Allison makes them take their shoes off in the apartment, so Klaus can see his brothers socks. One is dark purple, the other one is black. Klaus finds himself unable to think of anything to say that isn’t, ‘why don’t you you care that your fucking socks don’t match you animal?’ so he just waves the book in response. It’s heavy. He stops. He also wants to blurt something about mermaids so, so much.</p>
<p>Abort. Abort. “Five emailed everybody,” Klaus quickly decides to mention, instead. “I checked. He wants us to put SSL certificates on the emails. I don’t know what that means and I can’t find it in this book.” He gives Diego a big, hopeful, anticipatory smile.</p>
<p>His brother is frowning at the terminal. “It’s just encryption,” Diego says, pursing his lips and then picking at one of his nails.</p>
<p>“But what does it stand for?” Klaus demands.</p>
<p>“Um. Secure socket something. Layer? Whatever, it’s just words that don’t really mean anything.” Okay. “And Luther will probably do it. I don’t know why Five didn’t do it himself if he wanted to complain, what a lazy shit.”</p>
<p>“But do <em>what</em>,” Klaus presses.</p>
<p>“POP and IMAP send passwords in cleartext if there’s no extra authentication and encryption, that’s all,” Diego snaps. “I have to go.”</p>
<p>Klaus watches him stalk away literally two minutes after walking in. Okay, he can tell he’s hit some kind of nerve. What the fuck it is though – with any of his siblings – including himself – it’s kind of a lottery.</p>
<p>“That was weird,” Ben comments, not actually sounding all that interested.</p>
<p>“Fine,” Klaus huffs, at nobody. Diego gets pissed off at the most random shit, sometimes.</p>
<p>Maybe he’ll bring it back up at dinner, he figures.</p>
<p>For now: Maybe back to his email spam folder?</p>
<p>He can attempt to forget about Allison’s… taxes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He gets distracted by the discovery of<em> memes</em>. About <em>Rick Astley</em>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Enjoying your book?” Allison asks him, handing over a bowl of something that smells delicious but he’s not sure about due to his head still being in the tome Diego told him to read.</p>
<p>“So many acronyms,” Klaus tells her, vaguely. “I was looking up SSL. But now I’m on SSH.”</p>
<p>“You’ve read through quite a lot there,” Allison says, and he looks up. She’s appraising the page count.</p>
<p>“I may have skipped some,” he says. “Where’s the bro?” Diego’s place is empty.</p>
<p>“Had to go out. Said he’d be back later,” Allison shrugs. “You know how he is.”</p>
<p>Klaus debates dropping a merman quote at her, but decides to save it for potential future ammo. “Oh my god,” he blinks at his food. “You ordered tacos? When did you order tacos? I love you.”</p>
<p>“About thirty minutes after I started hearing Rick Astley blasting from the computer. Whatever you were looking at there.”</p>
<p>“Pornography,” Klaus says immediately. “Awful, awful pornography.”</p>
<p>“Oh.” Actually, he had been learning the definition of ‘Rick-rolling’. It’s like an internet-wide in-joke! Is it his imagination or is Allison leaning away from him slightly? “Well. It made me think of that taco place for some reason. And they deliver, so.”</p>
<p>“The taco place that’s a Mexican bar? With the mezcals?” Klaus tries not to obsess on the mezcal part too much. He’s making <em>choices</em>.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure it’s an actual restaurant, that just happens to serve alcohol,” Allison says, light. “I figured we could eat spicy food for once seeing as Diego’s out.”</p>
<p>Diego is a huge baby about anything spicier than a pickle. Klaus and Allison, on the other hand, enjoy the hot pepper stuff on almost everything. Allison never gets a comment, but Klaus apparently has ‘smokers tastebuds’ and can’t detect flavour. Whatever.</p>
<p>“Yay,” Klaus says, “good thinking.”</p>
<p>Digging in to the tacos is an experience. Klaus makes a huge mess and gets oily fingerprints all over the instructions for how to secure copy files over SSH.</p>
<p>“This stuff hasn’t actually changed much,” he ruminates out loud, referring to the book. “Like, fundamentally. From how I remember it.”</p>
<p>“I mean, it kind of has,” Allison counters. “Well. The internet has.”</p>
<p>Klaus hums. “Maybe I’ll stick to the graphical interface or whatever,” he says, “and play on the interwebs some more. So far I just found people pretending to be people from TV in fanfictions and classy folks looking for hookups.” He gives her a side eye.</p>
<p>“Thought you were looking at porn?” Allison raises her eyebrows.</p>
<p>“Yup. All sorts of porn,” Klaus confirms, lying like a rug. He tries to catch a falling piece of taco filling and fails. He thinks about the last time he ate something this tasty, holy shit. “Hey, did you order those little lime shots?”</p>
<p>“Uh, no? Do you… wait, you might be talking about the shots you drink between tequilas?”</p>
<p>“No, no, that’s sangrita,” Klaus flaps his hand, “like the lime ones? It has green stuff in. I don’t know what. It’s good. The food version of sangritas.”</p>
<p>“Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Allison says, looking sorry.</p>
<p>“No worries,” Klaus waves her off. “Just tasty. Tacos make me think of tasty things.” Tasty, tasty tacos.</p>
<p>“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Allison says, somehow not making a huge mess with her food, “but I just think. I mean. It’s been what, like a year you’ve been sober?”</p>
<p>Klaus waves a hand to and fro as an approximate. Rehab wasn’t really living sober. Not in the real world, properly, genuinely. It’s been a journey more than a line crossed in that respect.</p>
<p>“I just like it,” she continues. “That’s all. You like food and like, little. Uh.” Allison stops. Looks down again, then back up. “Little things I never think to notice. And you get stuck in to stuff. Like books and crosswords and. I just think it’s cool.” She smiles at him. “I hope that’s okay to say.”</p>
<p>Klaus swallows his mouthful of filling and blinks at his sister. “Anything you want to say is fine to say, Ally,” he says, completely sincere. “I’m not, like. This is not like the other times,” he tries, and notes how Allison looks down again at her food. “Okay,” Klaus guesses at what she’s thinking. “It’s not like I’m not taking responsibility for my actions, now?” He tries, kind of directly parroting Paul but whatever. “I make choices. I used to make different ones. You’re allowed to talk about it.” He considers. “Especially if I ever was a massive pain in the ass because of it,” he adds, trying not to feel regret or anything too bad about his entire life, because that road leads nowhere good.</p>
<p>“That… uh,” Allison looks at him. She’s so pretty, he thinks, suddenly, affectionately. Klaus puts down his food and takes a minute to look back at his sister across the table. “I mean,” she says, “I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I know I don’t go to your family therapy stuff or anything, probably because I hate going to my own therapist so much, but I like that thing you said about making choices. Taking responsibility.”</p>
<p>“Yeah. It sounds so easy, right,” Klaus says, raising his eyebrows a couple of times.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Allison says, and they regard each other for a long moment before she looks kind of sad, and then directs that expression at the remains of her tacos which just isn’t right.</p>
<p>Allison has visitation rights with her daughter, and things seem like they’re going well.</p>
<p>Klaus isn’t going to push his newfound clarity-of-thought choice-driven agenda on anyone, though, even if he thinks that they are both talking about the same thing here.</p>
<p>“Do you wanna do, like, a puzzle or something?” Allison asks, kind of out of nowhere.</p>
<p>“I mean, sure,” Klaus shrugs. “Do you even own any puzzles?”</p>
<p>“I have three,” Allison says. “I haven’t opened any of them. One is a picture of a pile of M&amp;Ms. I’ve uh. Never done one before? Really? Apart from kids ones?”</p>
<p>“Oh well then,” Klaus tells her. “Let’s puzzle it up. After food?”</p>
<p>“That would be nice,” Allison says.</p>
<p>It is kind of nice.</p>
<p>Klaus lets Allison make him pick out the edge pieces first, and restrains himself from making anything resembling a tax pun for the entire evening.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. socialise</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He finally finishes the massive book. Introduction to Linux Administration, completed! There’s a list of recommendations for more books at the end. One of the titles sounds far more interesting than the others, but they don’t own it so Klaus has to – gasp – go out and purchase the thing in a bookshop.</p><p>Except that he’s not really a social animal these days, and the thought of stepping out of the apartment by himself to cruise a book store that may or may not have what he’s after – shit. No. He’ll save his 30,000 steps for the park, thanks.</p><p>“Can I order books with the internet?” He queries absolutely nobody; Diego is at the gym and Allison has gone to visit some people she isn’t related to. Ben is who knows where; he’ll be back for scheduled dances-with-ghosts time this afternoon.</p><p>“Yes, Klaus,” he tells himself. “Let’s go do that.”</p><p>The book he wants is actually half posted online for free. It’s a PDF Klaus has to give an email address to download. He makes a new account, deciding that any future sign-ups to crap like this can go there instead.</p><p>One of the chapters is dedicated to security, and does actually explain SSL encryption. Diego was pretty much correct, but without context Klaus didn’t know what the fuck it was or how it would even get on their emails. Context, he figures, is king.</p><p>The security section mentions ‘penetration testing’, which has him holding his sides with laughter for far longer than it should because it sounds hilarious. Whatever, nobody can judge him. Also: <em>I</em><em>t </em><em>sounds</em><em> hilarious</em>. Klaus decides that penetration testing is next on his reading list, because he can talk about it with his siblings – basically his only social interaction these days, and he surprises himself by not actually caring about that overmuch – and hopefully they’ll find it awkward and he’ll be entertained.</p><p>An hour in and he has some shiny big words he doesn't really understand to throw about at dinner, and also the far more interesting knowledge that, allegedly, all the technical penetration testing (ha!) in the world won’t account for technology’s biggest flaws and weaknesses – the – dun dun dunnnn! – human operators.</p><p>Something about that sentiment rings clear in Klaus’ head. Plus – shit. What that really means is that if you want to get in somewhere you shouldn’t, or break something you shouldn’t – you don’t even really need mad computer skills. Just some people skills and the inclination towards being a nosy little shit.</p><p>He ruminates on the subject as he gets up for some lunch. On the refrigerator is a sticky pad with a selection of sparkly pens next to it, and Klaus spends maybe twenty minutes drawing elaborate depictions of the number three on a bunch of the sticky notes while he can’t decide what to eat. He sticks them on the high cupboards, the ones that contain glasses and things, and the bathroom door, and then two on the side of the couch where Allison prefers to sit.</p><p>“Is it time to do the thing yet?” Ben asks, appearing out of nowhere to investigate the distribution of his art.</p><p>“After food,” Klaus says, although he still has no idea what he wants. He settles on a watermelon flavoured shake sitting in the fridge door. It might be Allison’s, but she’s not here, so. “During food,” he amends. “What shall we try today?”</p><p>“Uhmmm.” Ben considers. He looks back at a post it with a shiny 3 on and says, “it’s ‘Allison week’, right? She does stuff on TV! Let’s do the TV.”</p><p>Klaus shrugs, brings his smoothie along.</p><p>The first time they ever did anything like this, it was a complete accident. Also, it scared the shit out of everybody.</p><p>Diego had been driving him back from a particularly un-fun outing to the park, wherein he’d seen the wandering leftovers of a former acquaintance with their head completely smashed in, groaning and complaining and more or less threatening to follow Klaus home. It had taken him a hot and very unpleasant minute to figure out that they were dead. Embarrassing.</p><p>Ben had foreseen mindset danger and made him call Diego from a payphone for a swift exit, and then had started making further noises of discontent when Klaus had started fidgeting. He hadn’t really been thinking anything, but he figures in hindsight that there were only so many short loops around the payphone he could do to get out of hearing range of the mashed up guy while Diego showed up, and he’d forgotten two days of B1 boosters, possibly due to anxiety about the bloods he was having the following day – and don’t bloods fucking suck, Klaus always thinks now, that stupid fucking sharp scratch reminding him of worse times, worse times Klaus, <em>worse times</em> – and his chest had been feeling a little tight so maybe his breathing was a little heavier than it could have been, and maybe he wasn’t really dressed for the physical activity and started to get a little warm and sweaty.</p><p>Either way, on appearance of Diego’s car, Klaus more or less fell into the passenger seat while Ben climbed in back, and Diego said, “they can’t follow us in the car, right?” And Klaus had replied, “No, no, everything will be fine soon,” and Ben had said, very very clearly and loudly, “do not even fucking think about it Klaus,” and Klaus had been about to respond, offended that he sounded so convinced Klaus was going to fuck himself up, when he realised that Diego had almost swerved off the road.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Diego was saying, smacking at the radio. “What the fuck was that?”</p><p>“What?” Klaus had looked around in alarm.</p><p>“Um.” Ben had leaned forward. “Klaus. What did you do?”</p><p>“Nothing, you fucking freaker outter,” Klaus had snapped, too on edge to care about snapping at him in front of their brother. “Why are you looking at the radio?”</p><p>Diego had fully pulled over immediately at that point and demanded an explanation for the loud crackling anxious sound of <em>Ben</em> that had just blasted through his car radio – which now appeared to be somewhat… blown.</p><p>In hindsight, Klaus had figured he could forgive Ben for having a massive panic about Klaus running off to do whatever; the guy in the park had been fucking hideous and it had been a while since he’d had a shock like that with somebody he used to know. That didn’t explain the radio bit, though. Or why, in the following months, Ben started finding it easier and easier to talk to him through anything electronic with a working speaker.</p><p> </p><p>“What shall I try and say today?” Ben says, now, sitting criss cross in front of the TV while Klaus slurps smoothie and decides that he might stay standing.</p><p>“Uh. How about - ‘I am your overlord, cometh to judge thee!’” He says, voice wobbling dramatically.</p><p>“Okay,” agrees Ben. Klaus thanks Christ that this seems to be limited to just Ben. He can’t imagine Diego or Allison’s reaction to living with a radio that wails, ‘Klaaaaaus, help me’, or ‘Klaaaaaaus I’m a dramatic shit who doesn’t respect personal boundaries just because I’m dead’, or whatever the fuck, whenever it wants.</p><p>“Cool.” Klaus winces, as he remembers that he has absolutely very incredibly little idea of how this ends up working. “So. I’ll just.” He looks at the TV. Does a little eyebrow wiggle. Gives it a wink. He edges closer to it and flips the little switch that turns it on. There are weird commercials for weird things running. The volume is pretty low.</p><p>“I am your overlord,” Ben says, moving his face closer to the picture. “I am your overlord!”</p><p>The front door shuts in the distant background and Klaus realises that it may actually be Allison, and she’d seemed mad at him for messing with the laundry last week and now he’s stolen maybe-her smoothie. Shit. Uh. He begins to slurp faster.</p><p>“Hey,” definitely-Allison’s voice calls. “Are you-”</p><p>“I AM YOUR OVERLORD!” Blasts out of the TV suddenly, and Allison yell-screams just as Klaus jumps and throws the empty smoothie pot behind the set.</p><p>“Holy shit what is – oh my fucking <em>God</em>,” Allison says, very loudly, pointing a steady finger at the screen. Klaus whirls around and jumps, because that’s Ben’s face, except really big and kind of off colour.</p><p>“Hi!” Bens big face says, cheerfully.</p><p>“Holy <em>God</em>,” Allison says again, hand on her chest. She takes a second. And then. “Did you have to have the volume all the way up?” And it’s directed at Klaus, which, not fair!</p><p>“It was on low!” Klaus complains. “Ben did it.”</p><p>On screen, Ben snorts. “How,” he refutes.</p><p>Allison leans around and peers behind him. “Is that an empty smoothie carton? On the carpet?” She queries, except she sounds madder already.</p><p>“No,” Klaus sidesteps to block it. “It’s Ben! Look! Ben! The dead guy! Ta daaaa!”</p><p>Allison gives him a <em>look</em>. “Nice to see you, Ben,” she says. “Clean that up Klaus. Please.”</p><p>“Oh my God,” Klaus huffs. He goes to pick up the carton. As he walks past the TV, he flips it off. Literally.</p><p>When he looks back at the screen, Ben’s giant ridiculous face is giving him a look of deep betrayal. “That,” Ben says, “was so. Rude.”</p><p>“Woah,” says Allison. “That’s new. And kind of freaky.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus says, and goes to unplug the thing at the wall. “He still there?”</p><p>“There’s a picture of Bens’s hand with it’s middle finger up on the screen,” Allison tells him.</p><p>“Ben,” Klaus exclaims. “Don’t be so rude to your sister.”</p><p>“It’s for you,” Ben says, sounding cross. “Come on, I just got on here.”</p><p>“<em>How</em> are you doing that?” Klaus asks, holding the plug and staring, kind of dismal.</p><p>“How many times!” Ben says. “You are doing it! Figure it out! If you figure it out I can-”</p><p>“Ben?” Allison says, and the picture has gone.</p><p>“-do this whenever and can you think of all the pranks we could – oh.”</p><p>Klaus exhales through his nose, long and discontent.</p><p>“Do you want me to get the radio?” Allison says, after a minute.</p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus says, at the same time as Ben does the same. He feels weirdly pissed off, all of a sudden.</p><p>Something else to journal about.</p><p>Ben doesn’t come through the radio, after twenty five minutes of trying. All Klaus can do is apologise, and promise to try again tomorrow.</p><p> </p><p>After that, he needs a distraction. He kind of wants to follow Diego to the gym but apparently that shit’s annoying, and Klaus, in a sudden fit of conscience, spends an hour re-pairing all of Diego’s socks – not that his brother will even notice – and making sure his goal sheets are clearly up and visible in his room. Not that Diego’s going to look at that either, but Klaus needs to be able to prove at the drop of a hat that he’s still trying, and that he’s not wasting all the time and energy his brother has put into making him start rediscovering life the past year.</p><p>His latest blood sheets are at the end of the pile. Klaus has print outs of these, too. The ALT level is the last thing in his bloods that’s still kind of shitty, and that will probably take another year to get straight if he carries on like he has been the past eight months. Klaus picks at the skin around his fingernails and looks at the number for a long minute.</p><p>Then he goes and gets a drink of water, sees a big sparkly ‘3’ on the cupboard with the glasses, and decides that maybe he probably ought to go for a long walk around the park.</p><p> </p><p>When he gets back, he feels better, a little clearer headed. He’s got a couple of hours to kill before dinner, so logs back on the computer and ends up binge reading a ton of articles on social engineering.</p><p>There’s a lot of information out there. There are words and terminology and theory names that Klaus is never going to really take in, mostly because he has no reason to. The underlying shit though is pretty consistent, and Klaus runs into a bunch of memes once again – and the concept is too simple to be correct, surely?</p><p>He gets the idea and figured they were making fun of something so simple so as to illustrate the possibilities – but – really?</p><p> </p><p>The good old Umbrella Academy forum seems like a safe environment to experiment with this shit.</p><p>It’s far more fun a place now than when he first started perusing it. Klaus has heard wild rumours about the members. One of the best is that TIM the administrator is actually a middle aged Texan lady with bright red hair; that particular feat of deception appeals to Klaus’ naughtier side.</p><p>Diego met a bunch of the posters in person in June, just a couple of months back, which is also hilarious as far as Klaus is concerned. He would have pitched Allison and Vanya straight away for something like that. Nope. Neither of them gave a shit. Diego – who more than half the people reading his posts think is a prank account – went to meet the fans.</p><p>Fucking <em>hilarious</em>.</p><p>As curious as Klaus would have been to see that shit show – they wanted to meet in a bar. He isn’t anywhere near enough of a dipshit to think that would have been a great idea.</p><p>Klaus tappy-tappy-taps his way back to the forum.</p><p>Okay. Social engineering.</p><p>Apparently it’s a lot simpler than it sounds.</p><p>The first proof he wants to try is from an article about passwords and how easy it is to get people to just… tell you them. It’s kind of shoddy, and Klaus doesn’t actually think that the formula for guessing them really is <em>that</em> easy; he can kind of imagine people telling you their passwords maybe if you called them and pretend to be a bank or something? Someone important. Not… porn star names.</p><p>Therefore, what would help right now is a <em>social experiment</em>.</p><p>Klaus makes a new thread titled, ‘BORED PPL PLZ’.</p><p>K-HOLE: HEY! fun game. everybody should work out their pornstar name<br/>
K-HOLE: first pet, street you grew up on and mothers maiden name</p><p>He waits, not sure if anybody is even online.</p><p>UMBRELLAFAAAAAN: ghost madison ohlsen<br/>
UMBRELLAFAAAAAN: does not sound like porn dude</p><p>UMBRELLAFAAAAAN is actually a cute kid named Noah – Diego had <em>actually</em> used the word ‘cute’ to describe the guy after the meetup thing, which means that he’s on Klaus’ radar forever. And ever. And okay here’s something to work with,</p><p>Klaus logs out. Goes back to the login page.</p><p><em>Login: UMBRELLAFAAAAAN<br/>
</em> <em>Password: ghost</em></p><p>Nope.</p><p><em>Login: UMBRELLAFAAAAAN<br/>
</em> <em>Password: madisonghost</em></p><p>Nope.</p><p><em>Login: UMBRELLAFAAAAAN<br/>
</em> <em>Password: masionsuwhybdheahjthiswon’tfuckingwork</em></p><p>Nope. Um… maybe he needs more to work with?</p><p>K-HOLE: what year were you born that might fit in better i dunno<br/>
UMBRELLAFAAAAAN: 1994????????????? lol</p><p><em>Login: UMBRELLAFAAAAAAN<br/>
</em> <em>Password: ghost1994</em></p><p>It fucking works.</p><p>Jesus fuck.</p><p>It’s that easy? Surely it’s not always that easy. Klaus logs back out.</p><p>After a minutes consideration, he types a different username into the login page.</p><p><em>Login: </em> <em>minnymouse<br/>
</em> <em>P</em><em>assword:</em></p><p>What does he really <em>know</em> about Allison, for example?</p><p>Shit. That’s a conundrum.</p><p><em>Password</em>:</p><p>He lives with her. It shouldn’t be hard.</p><p>They were born in 1989. He ex is called Pete. Parker. Patrick. Uh. She has a kid called Claire. That’s probably more likely to be it. She likes… she likes...</p><p><em>Password</em>:</p><p>Fuck it. It’s one account of many. Maybe there’s no point in guessing this way. It could be anything.</p><p>Klaus shuts the screen down. Then he opens it back up, suddenly remembering something.</p><p>He sends a private message to UMBRELLAFAAAAAN.</p><p>
  <em>bro change your password please</em>
</p><p>He gets a message less than a minute later, but it’s from TIM.</p><p>
  <em>Good call.</em>
</p><p>Klaus purses his lips, then salutes the screen. Fair play.</p><p>God, he’d kill for footage of Diego meeting this lady.</p><p>UMBRELLAFAAAAAN messages him back after less than another minute -</p><p>
  <em>lol k</em>
</p><p>Klaus thinks that one isn’t a pattern; he ought to try this again. TIM probably won’t kill him.</p><p> </p><p>The thread generates a fair number of responses. Klaus gets into five accounts before he calls it a raging proof of how awful people are at choosing passwords. Then he changes his own, from ghbjayuh(YUhu^&amp;^^ to t28jabHJKKKbsha. He has no idea how obvious the acronym is. Better safe than sorry.</p><p>God damn. He sighs, kind of fed up of the internet for a bit. Klaus looks around the apartment, sees no people.</p><p>And that’s the thing. There are no people. No dead people, no live people. No people, no people, no people.</p><p>Before this year, Klaus had always thought himself a social animal. Sobriety is proving him wrong about a lot of things; not least his locus of control – but, interestingly, the inward shift appears to have happened to a number of preferences, including the one for absorbing other human energy. Sure, he still considers himself an extrovert. But – well. Other people are kind of…</p><p>Klaus can take them or leave them, now. That’s all.</p><p>What would Paul say? Something about learning to make meaningful connections, instead of basing relationships on superficial… something.</p><p>Meaningful connections are hard. Well, sometimes they’re hard. Klaus doesn’t know how he’d fare at a party, these days. He can make great small talk, in, like, a store or whatever, but anything deeper than that seems like a distant idea of an achievement.</p><p>Family are somewhat easier, but that’s probably because they’re just so used to trampling all over each other, and they already know all the really shit stuff about each other – like the fact that this is the first year he’s been sober in decades, or the fact that Five isn’t actually a teenager – and – oh. There goes his mood.</p><p>Thinking about Five.</p><p>If there’s one unexpected friend he’s forged out of the past six months of sobriety, it’s that little fucker. And now, Klaus is both at a loose end <em>and</em> needs a quick pick-me-up.</p><p>Klaus goes and dials the telephone.</p><p>“Hargreeves residence!” Grace answers, like the white, middle class wet dream of a wife she was built to be.</p><p>“Hello Mother,” Klaus greets fondly. “Are you well?”</p><p>“Klaus,” Grace exclaims. “It’s so good to hear from you, darling. I’m very well, of course. How are you?”</p><p>“I’m a delight, as always, thank you for asking,” Klaus says, idly twirling the cord. “Say – is that pesky little miscreant Number Five around, per chance?”</p><p>“He most certainly is,” Grace confirms. “Shall I fetch him for you?”</p><p>“Thank you, Mother,” Klaus tells her, in the way he only does when Diego absolutely isn’t around and can’t scowl at him for. Otherwise it’s ‘Mom’, or ‘Grace’ at a push. Klaus adores his brother, he really does.</p><p>He doesn’t have to wait long, until: “Klaus,” comes a short greeting in Five’s voice down the line.</p><p>He adores this one, too. “Bro,” Klaus greets in return. “How’s it hanging? How’s things? Read anything good lately in that big old library?”</p><p>“Bored of sitting around Allison’s penthouse?” Five comes back, which has Klaus grinning ear to ear.</p><p>“It’s a regular apartment,” he says, “which you’d know if you ever visited.”</p><p>“I’ve been a little busy.”</p><p>“Like usual.”</p><p>“How is <em>your</em> foray into information theory and signal processing? Oh, wait. You’re spending your time sitting around eating noodles.”</p><p>Noodles? How cute. “I miss your face,” Klaus tells his brother, fondly.</p><p>“I wish you’d do something with your brain,” Five returns.</p><p>“I conducted a wild study on password acquisition via social engineering earlier,” Klaus tells him. “The results were something else. Eight years ago I might’ve had a whole article to write on the subject.”</p><p>“Hope you used a VPN,” Five tells him. “Otherwise TIM is gonna come right down on your head.”</p><p>Wow. “Oh, oh, oh, Five I posted that like three hours ago!” Klaus crows. “You little tyke. Get off the Umbrella Academy fan board when you’re supposed to be doing hard math.”</p><p>“I can multi-task, unlike some people,” Five retorts, which is almost definitely true.</p><p>“You love it there. What are you multi-tasking, right now?” Klaus asks. “Entertain me.”</p><p>“Why, what are you doing?” Five demands.</p><p>“Nothing,” Klaus says. “Nobody’s here.”</p><p>“Nobody?”</p><p>“I can live without supervision.”</p><p>“Sure you can.” Five suddenly sounds a lot closer to the phone. “What <em>have</em> you been up to, apart from trolling idiots?”</p><p>“Re-leaning the Linux kernel,” Klaus says. “From an administrative standpoint, anyway.”</p><p>“Should tide you well when you decide to get a job as some asshole’s support guy,” Five tells him.</p><p>“Hah!” Says Klaus. “Job.”</p><p>“Are you ever going to visit?” Five asks, then, out of nowhere.</p><p>“Should I?” Klaus returns, surprised.</p><p>“I don’t know. If you wanted to, I have some tissue samples you might find interesting. I think I’m biologically related to Luther.”</p><p>“Really.” Klaus blinks. “That means you’re, like, twins.”</p><p>“I know,” Five says. “I’m not telling him.”</p><p>“I get that,” Klaus allows, thinking about how that conversation might go.</p><p>Five muses, “I think I’m going to try and track down our birth mother.” Klaus blinks. “Okay.” Five says, and pauses for a moment. “This is getting unsettlingly emotional.”</p><p>“Go back to your math, you fucking nerd,” Klaus concedes, letting that go. “Nice insulting you.”</p><p>“Likewise.”</p><p>Five hangs up.</p><p>Klaus looks around surreptitiously as he replaces the handset, even though he knows that nobody is watching. God, he enjoys the telephone conversations he has with Five; it’s always a two minute assault of truth bombs that leave him feeling clean and free of his worries. Like Five has picked them up and thrown them over his own old-man shoulder.</p><p>They get each other.</p><p>At least he thinks they do. Five had sat him down six months ago and demanded to know if Diego and Allison were keeping him hostage in her apartment. That had been a miscommunication.</p><p>And – they obviously weren’t, but Klaus had been touched by his brother’s concern. And now he’s related to Luther. He’s not going to share that tidbit before one of the two of them does.</p><p>Klaus enjoys talking to Five.</p><p>He keeps forgetting to mention it to Diego, but that’s fine. Diego and Five don’t really understand each other, anyway. Klaus suspects that he would be left playing middle man if he brought it up. Diego and Five can figure each other out in their own time.</p><p>Speaking of. Klaus may have unpaired his socks, but now he’s a prank short. Allison told them to give it a rest, but it honestly seemed more like she was talking to Diego than him. And probably because she feels sorry for Klaus; like, he can see it, a lot of the time, when she’s not telling him off for taking her stuff or getting after him to eat or shower regularly and get hair cuts and whatever.</p><p>Diego is way more relaxed about that kind of thing. Probably because he saw Klaus an awful lot more when he was falling into dumpsters and shaving with Xacto knives or whatever was lying around. Thinking back, he misses his twenty-something skin. It needed way less moisturiser.</p><p> </p><p>Klaus puts a big smelly fish in the laundry basket.</p><p> </p><p>… Strangely, Allison is not impressed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Shook</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shit. Allison genuinely doesn’t find Laundry Fish funny in the slightest. Klaus may need to go elsewhere for the day.</p><p> </p><p>He ends up walking until he’s at a stop, and then he’s on the bus, smoking and watching the stops go by. He only really realises where he’s been headed the whole time when the stop nearest to the Academy rolls up.</p><p>Klaus disembarks and thinks about the note he left on his bedroom door: ‘BRB &lt;3’</p><p>It’s kind of for both roomies. Allison because she might think he’s run off because she told him off. Diego because he gets kind of needlessly worried about stuff like not being able to find Klaus for a full day.</p><p>Five <em>said</em> he should visit.</p><p>Klaus is incoming.</p><p> </p><p>On scanning the big empty hallways, and a few of the big empty rooms, barring his giant facsimile that still stares balefully out from the fireplace wall in the family room, Five doesn’t seem to be around. Klaus gives looking a rest before starting to poke about into the bedrooms, though, so it might just be that he’s here and hiding. Same for Luther, Klaus figures. He can’t remember the last time he spoke to the big guy, come to think of it. He’s probably doing some important stuff. Same as Five. Ha. Twins.</p><p>So Klaus idles around the place – it’s plenty big enough. And then he ends up in front of a door he’d kind of forgotten about. It always used to be locked up tight, for one. Well, after they turned maybe thirteen or so, anyway. It was definitely off limits after Five left, Klaus remembers that much.</p><p>He tests the handle on the composite door, out of habit for poking his nose into things.</p><p>It’s... open.</p><p>… Cool.</p><p>Klaus peeks his head inside. The lights are off; there’s nobody home. He flips the switch on the inside wall and peers around at the dust-cloth covered surfaces.</p><p>One area is tidy, and it holds an L-shaped desk, a bunch of wires and a very old fashioned computer station, with a more modern monitor and keyboard attached. A quick poke around discovers a mouse, stuck to the side of the desk. Klaus ignores the set up in favour of craning his entire torso over the top, noting the scrape marks on the floor from the heavy steel. The wires go back into a cylindrical tidy, and then that goes up the wall, neatly clipped into place, until it disappears through a hole in the far ceiling panel.</p><p>Klaus idly wonders what the wires attach to, at this end, and makes an attempt at pushing the desk enough to peer behind it.</p><p>Absolutely not happening, he realises rather fast. Also – that narrows the meddler down to exactly Luther.</p><p>Klaus makes a guess at which room is above him, and traverses the staircase and walks back around until he’s in one of the unused bedrooms. Or, what used to be one of the unused bedrooms.</p><p>There is a bed, on its side against the far wall, nestled in with a wardrobe and a small table. Of more interest is the trio of desks set up in the remaining space. There is a floor based hub, and when Klaus peeks around it there are wires coming up out of the floor that match the ones he left below. Two big computers are attached to it, and on the desks are three monitors, two keyboards and a mouse. There are numerous pads of paper, one with a couple of envelopes tucked half way inside, a few pencils and a waste paper bin. Klaus itches to take a look in the notepads and their contents, but restrains himself, mostly imagining his own journal being read without his say so. Well, to be honest, woe betide anybody who decided to look. They could knock themselves out with what Paul describes as macabre, morbid, maudlin and other ‘m’ words… even when he feels like he’s being cheerful. But it’s the principal of the thing.</p><p>There’s a big desk lamp and a ridiculously big chair, and Klaus hopes that Luther has been having fun with this set up, because it looks like the kind of nerdy space he’d he happy in, if Klaus remembers him right at all. And, for once, it’s all his.</p><p>Klaus leaves the room with the door open a little crack, exactly how he found it. His mood is lifted by his discovery.</p><p>He makes his way back down the stairs and then back into the lab, because now his nosiness wants an outlet.</p><p>Pogo’s lab, he marvels. He’s in Pogo’s lab.</p><p>Well, what used to be Pogo’s lab.</p><p>Inasmuch as Klaus knows that Pogo isn’t at the Academy any more, he has no idea where the old dude has actually gone. He’s pretty sure he was around when the information was disseminated, but God knew he’d had an extremely rough few months at that point and was unlikely to be listening even if he wasn’t blasted. It’s not really come up again since, and he hasn’t honestly thought to ask.</p><p>Instead of mulling on it, Klaus hits the boot button on the main machine, and watches as the monitor comes to life.</p><p>While the boot sequence scrolls down the screen, he takes another look around the rest of the room.</p><p>There are shelves covered in discs, a few notepads which – on quick flick through – contain dust and not a lot else. And then there are security tapes. Rows and rows of cassettes, double stacked now that he looks up close. There are a couple of empty shelves, the dust indicating that some of the cassettes have been removed.</p><p>Klaus knows about the room upstairs with the tape player. He guesses Pogo took a selection of these tapes in there, in the hopes that one of them would stumble across Mom’s adventure in not providing first aid or whatever.</p><p>He thinks on <em>that</em> for a second, before he just... lets it go.</p><p>Grabbing one of the chairs – just regular chairs, not even desk chairs, he thinks, kind of judgmentally; this is a lab! – he sits himself in front of the screen, un-sticks the mouse from the side of the desk and starts to have a poke around.</p><p>It’s kind of fun</p><p>There is an ISP active and connected, so he can get on the internet. There’s a nice browser waiting on the desktop, and there’s a vault application pinned that contains an entire ream of – oh, shit. It’s not even password protected. Klaus opens it straight away and starts scrolling and clicking about to get a good eyeful of the contents.</p><p>Bank accounts, sort codes, account holder names, personal identifiers, and then some usernames and passwords, listed right next to IP addresses and server details.</p><p>Multiple server details. The machine on the floor is huge – Klaus runs a quick check on the specs. But there’s no way it’s playing host to all these aliases. He wonders where the servers are, what they’re for.</p><p>Perusing the passwords, he briefly thinks back on his foray into social engineering. There’s no way he’d have been able to just guess any of these like that. They’re all random strings of characters and numbers. What the fuck do you do for those? Is this when you call somebody pretending to be their bank, and get them to just tell you?</p><p>God <em>damn</em>. This looks like the entire suite of Hargreeves bank accounts.</p><p>He wonders if Luther has access to these. Somebody must do. They must still be paying for – he doesn’t know, Electricity? Food and stuff? The internet access this computer has? Klaus resolves to dig a little, if only to find out how the real world works. Allison hadn’t really had taxes on her computer, but here’s no way Dad has weird fanfiction about them where he’s pretending to have bank accounts.</p><p>Instead of vomiting in his mouth, like he abruptly wants to at that thought, Klaus inadvertently replays Dad’s voice in his head. He said it enough times: <em>T</em><em>oo nosy for your own good Number Four! Actions have consequences Number Four!</em> Ha – yes they fucking do, he thinks.</p><p>Clicking on a random IP address opens a browser window. After a couple of seconds, he gets an error code: 410.</p><p>Oh! Klaus remembers this one. 410: Gone. So it’s a dead link?</p><p>Then he thinks about the banking passwords, and remembers his conversation with Five about VPNs and TIM tracking him.</p><p>He goes back to the OS and searches for ‘VPN’.</p><p>An unfamiliar app is returned, but it’s got VPN in the name so it must be what he’s after. When he starts it up, it gives him options.</p><p>There are multiple ways to connect. They all have different names. Klaus purses his lips, reading down the list. And – okay, there’s an option with the same name as the username and password for the site that gave him a 410. Coincidence?</p><p>Klaus selects the name from the list, waits for it to connect. Then he goes back to his browser and hits F5.</p><p>A site loads. Success! Klaus holds up a hand, high-fives himself. Good job, Number Four, he crows inwardly. You nosy shit, indeed.</p><p>It looks like – a forum! Jesus, what is it with this family and forums? He glances at the address bar and notes that the certificates have thrown an error, like they’re dodgy – thanks Five for making him look that up. Also the DNS seems to have resolved into a weird looking address. He doesn’t really know what that means, but he can look it up later.</p><p>There’s a log in screen, and he has a username and password. Klaus copies and pastes the monster alphanumeric strings in to the little boxes, hits enter and watches as the page reloads. When it’s finished, Klaus scrolls with the keyboard, sort of not really processing for a second what he’s looking at.</p><p>It’s definitely a forum, or message board, or something, but instead of hilarious conspiracy theories it shows a list of pictures and dollar amounts.</p><p>He processes it like something he’s watching on TV. What he’s looking at... can’t be right.</p><p>Klaus, beginning to get a bit of a bad feeling about this, clicks in on a section labelled artillery.</p><p>Jesus. They are sales listings. If they’re real, somebody is selling a lot of things that can kill people, he can tell that much from the photographs. Which are increasingly graphic. There are a lot of acronyms on the listing he doesn’t understand. The dollar tag is… a lot. Okay.</p><p>Klaus backs out of artillery. He scrolls down, stops at random.</p><p>He stares at the listing in front of him, for a long minute.</p><p>He hovers over it, and then, against his better judgement clicks in.</p><p>The images are the first thing he realises he’s trying desperately not to process, even as he stares at them. The… <em>price tag</em> is next.</p><p>Jesus Christ.</p><p>Jesus fucking Christ.</p><p>It’s got to be a joke.</p><p>It’s not a joke. Klaus knows that one in his bones. It’s not a joke. This is real, and that’s a price tag on a person, and there are pictures. And.</p><p>Klaus should want to vomit. He does, distantly. He can’t think, or really feel his hands for some reason. He should… he should call the cops.</p><p>Except. Shit. He <em>can’t</em>. The cops are going to take one look and arrest <em>him</em> for being on the damn site. With a VPN. And a saved login. And if they don’t think it was him they’ll – fuck, they’ll arrest <em>Luther</em>. Or <em>Five</em>. He can’t do that. He can’t.</p><p>Klaus logs out. Stares at the empty slots where he knows that there are pictures and dollar amounts.</p><p>What the <em>actual fuck?</em></p><p>Hand over his mouth, one coming up over his eyes, Klaus thinks, wildly, that he can’t tell anybody about this. They don’t need to see this. It’s like the ghosts; he can tell them, once he’s – once he has proof of – of what? That some sick asshole made a site that probably isn’t real? They might tell him it isn’t real. Or call the police without thinking.</p><p>Klaus can’t stand the idea of Luther getting arrested, he just can’t.</p><p>Oh, Christ. He might be so out of his depth here that it’s actually ridiculous.</p><p>
  <em>You’ve always been too nosy Number Four.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Actions have consequences Number Four.</em>
</p><p>No fucking shit, Klaus thinks.</p><p>Great. Now to brace himself for a look at the rest of the links in the vault.</p><p> </p><p>An indeterminate amount of time later, Klaus shuts down the lab feeling kind of detached from reality. He fights the illogical urge to wipe his prints off the keyboard. It’s a dumb, selfish idea and at least they’re right there, now, along with whoever else in his family has touched it.</p><p>And – god damn. They can’t have done anything more than log in to the machine and check the outgoing connection. Luther must have literally just checked connectivity to the outside line, there’s no fucking way he looked at any of that. For a start, he’d have – mobilised, or something. Made some kind of mission out of it. Made some kind of… what the fuck.</p><p>Alright. Klaus recognises his mind isn’t being overly productive right now, at least. He’s 90% general panic, 5% specific panic and 5% just trying to find the right money to ride the bus again. His fingers itch. His skin kind of itches, all over.</p><p>He thinks about Paul’s insistence that he isn’t his thoughts; that he can take a step back from whatever his mind is spewing out without having to go to the effort of shutting it down. That works great when his mind is just saying random shit like, 'what if you were a fish and somebody wanted to catch and eat your family?!', at four in the morning when he just wants to sleep. It’s not so easy when it feels like there’s an accompanying lump under his sternum, a bit of a sweat on his palms and a ringing in his ears that’s not going away.</p><p>Klaus recites to himself, as loudly as possible in his own head, that he can make a choice about what to do with the information he’s learned. A real, sober, informed, <em>sober</em>, actual choice. Just as soon as he calms down enough to think about it.</p><p>Out. Of. His. Depth.</p><p>‘Oh well’, is his next tactic. When things aren’t going his way, he says ‘oh well’ and keeps on keeping on. ‘Oh well’, ‘oh well’, ‘oh well’.</p><p>Klaus has... always been pretty good at learning to... metaphorically... swim.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p> </p><p>He gets back and finds dinner in the form of one of the three containers stacked near the microwave. Klaus heats his up and throws it into a bowl.</p><p>“What’s up with you?” Ben, around for electronics yelling practice time, asks, as Klaus mechanically shovels the mac and cheese into his face. Meals remain an objective, so he’s going to eat. Because he’s not fucking up.</p><p>“Nothing,” Klaus lies. “Just. You know. Nobody around.” In truth he doesn’t actually care about that, but it’s an easy out. Allison is visiting Claire and staying until bedtime. Diego is out giving a detective he thinks Klaus doesn’t know about a bunch of pick up lines along with his evidence collection.</p><p>Klaus kind of likes that they both have lives. Also it means he avoids questions right now.</p><p>He leaves his bowl in the dishwasher when he’s done, and spends thirty minutes convincing Ben to sing <em>that fucking Rick Astley song</em> with him through the TV.</p><p> </p><p>Klaus sleeps, and wakes up, and emails Five. He thinks he hears Diego on the phone to somebody at ridiculous o’clock, and then hears him address Luther of all people. Klaus wonders what’s up. He doesn’t want to pry, though.</p><p>He can’t stop thinking about that fucking cluster fuck he’s found on Pogo’s computer. The vault containing IPs and accounts for multiple forums, all toting sales of things that nobody needs to be buying, and worse, linked back to some very fucking suspicious holding accounts. Klaus feels sick over it, more accurately. It’s been there since he left the Academy, washing about in his gut. Maybe, he thinks, if he goes back and looks, something in Dad’s journals would explain – actually, no way. The man wasn’t an idiot. If Dad knew about it, and that was not in any way legal – there’s no way he would have written anything down in a journal.</p><p>Stuff about his kids, sure. Stuff about his money, very very very unlikely.</p><p>Dad always had so much faith in machines though. And he was arrogant, Klaus thinks. Arrogant enough to believe his secrets would die with him, maybe. He’s not sure.</p><p>The following day, when he thinks, God, this 5am alertness is bordering on ridiculous, Klaus pulls his Hierarchy of Values sheet out and reads down it again for the first time in a while.</p><p>Around mid-way, next to a sticky star, is written, ‘Fuck up dead bitches’.</p><p>There’s other stuff. Klaus wants to be a good person, and decent brother, and enjoy the ‘more to life’ and all that jazz. But what Klaus <em>really</em> wanted when he wrote that list was some control over the otherwise objectively non-existent assholes that try and enforce their wails and demands on his life. He <em>still</em> wants it. And that – doesn’t have to just mean noisy ghosts, does it?</p><p>Klaus contemplates the list for a while longer. ‘Fuck up dead bitches’.</p><p>Yeah. He’s going to have to go back. He can’t fuck up anything while he’s avoiding it.</p><p>Klaus has by and large seen worse shit than any other fucker he knows. If there’s anybody who can deal with this fucking asswipe of a shit show, it’s going to have to be him.</p><p> </p><p>Five and Luther remain absent on his subsequent trips back to the Academy. He picks out the right VPN tunnel and logs back in to what looks like the master server with a carefully saved username and password. If he avoids the sites with the sales listings and stops freaking out about it, digging around gets interesting very fast. He has an administrative account, apparently, so he can see a lot. The big daddy of the place – the sysadmin as it were – is an account named modecker. They have 0 posts. Anywhere.</p><p>Klaus wonders, then, abruptly, if this sysadmin is monitoring <em>his</em> logins. If they are, and they know Reginald is dead…</p><p>But shit. He’s been poking about for over a week. Nothing’s happened. Does this mean – wait, could it have been <em>Pogo</em>? Oh Jesus, Klaus doesn’t want to think about that. The guy was kind of like a friendly Uncle or something, growing up. Also under Reginald’s thumb, even if he had more authority than the kids. He was good to them, Klaus thinks, as much as he could have been.</p><p>He can’t stand thinking about it, suddenly. He knows that he ought to bring it up with Paul, the whole topic of Pogo is probably long overdue for at very least a little bit of journalling. Except – Klaus shouldn’t do either of those things because that would mean either lying or fessing up about what he’s found.</p><p> </p><p>By the following mid-week, his emotions are kind of fried.</p><p>For the first time in a long while, he’s keeping secrets – and Diego isn’t around to talk to. Vanya had said something about her bike earlier in the week and now Diego is fucking obsessed; it’s not good enough to just fix the tyre, he needs to fix the light and the foot holding thing on one of the pedals, and, Klaus doesn’t know, get her a fucking basket for the front or something.</p><p>He’s not really annoyed about it; Diego spends way too much time looking out for him as it is. He drives him around, comes to way too many family therapy sessions – and now those are down to once a month he could back off a little, but he doesn’t. It’s dumb to be feeling like he’s being ignored when he gets so much fucking attention. And he should be pleased, anyway – re <em>keeping secrets</em>.</p><p>Plus, Diego’s spending more time talking to Luther now, Klaus thinks. They speak on the phone a lot. Diego complains about having to email him back. It’s a good thing, maybe they’re friends… again.</p><p>He never really got the origin of what happened with those two, just that as teenagers they seemed to spiral out of control with how competitive they got and then both acted like dicks more or less constantly. As children they were rarely apart, back when Luther wanted to have fun and Diego wasn’t pissed off all the time. Diego should have another decent relationship in his life.</p><p>And Allison has an actual life, and doesn’t need to near Klaus’ shit besides. Ben deserves a very long break from hearing about Klaus involving himself in nasty crap. Five is away somewhere. Luther’s hanging out with Diego. Paul and his support team made it very clear last year that illegal shit is a no-go area for them. That’s… pretty much Klaus.</p><p>Klaus <em>can’t</em> be feeling neglected right now. That would be stupid.</p><p> </p><p>Klaus journals it out, tries out using code words instead of actual descriptions. It reminds him of being a teenager, for some reason – avoiding using the real words, using nice euphemisms for things instead of calling them what they are.</p><p>Right. So maybe thinking about stuff just isn’t doing him any good. So he decides to stop thinking and journaling and wanting to talk about it, and makes the choice to instead do something productive.</p><p>What Klaus does instead is purchase a second hand tape player, head over to the Academy, and liberate a smallish TV set from one of the spare rooms upstairs.</p><p>He sets it all up in a free spot in Pogo’s lab.</p><p>He can’t help but notice the camera in the corner, dead like all the others through the house now. Turned off, like the computer stays this time.</p><p>Klaus looks at the line of tapes around the office. Facts first.</p><p><em>Somebody</em> had to have been logging on in here.</p><p>Klaus grabs a cassette, slides it in to the player and hits play.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Sec</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The cassettes are kind of… addictive.</p><p>Klaus starts out looking exclusively for recordings of Pogo’s lab, or the hallway just outside. Klaus finds himself distracted, watching hours of small children in classrooms or the kitchens or messing around when they thought nobody was looking. He wonders if anybody else has ever watched these.</p><p>He takes a post-it and writes ‘NO’ in big letters; pins it to one of the empty shelves. Initially he just uses the space to stack up the tapes of them sleeping. And then he doesn’t want to see any more film of Ben crying. And then he also doesn’t need to see anybody else's ‘special training’, no matter how fucking nosy he is.</p><p>After almost ten days, though, Klaus is no closer to figuring out who was operating the computer for evil these last ten years. He figures out the filing system for the remaining cassettes, and instead of picking tapes at random, starts watching from their early teens onward, in chronological order. Everything earlier, he leaves in a tidy pile on the floor by the TV.</p><p>Back at Allison’s, when nobody else is around, he spends time looking up ways to destroy remote servers. It’s purely theoretical. Kind of.</p><p>Diego sneaks up on him when he’s trying to understand fork bombs.</p><p>“You’ll be buying donuts for years, man,” he comments, peering over Klaus’ shoulder and making him jump about a mile.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Klaus starts. He flaps one hand at Diego while the other sits on his chest. “Oh my God. Don’t <em>do</em> that.”</p><p>“What?” Diego scowls at him. “Stop you making a <em>massive</em> mistake? Allison will actually kill you if you let that run. Computers cost money.”</p><p>He jabs a finger at the screen, where Klaus has a text editor open displaying one line of characters.</p><p>:(){ :|:&amp;;:</p><p>OH. “No, asshole, I mean don’t sneak up on me,” Klaus complains. “I have a delicate disposition.”</p><p>Diego stares at him. “No, you don’t.”</p><p>“Well, I do today.”</p><p>He gets an appraising look off of his brother. “Everything okay?” Diego asks, eyes narrowing.</p><p>“Fine, yes. Thank you,” Klaus says.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Diego presses, folding his arms.</p><p>Klaus thinks fast. “Just hangry,” he deflects. “I wasn’t going to run it,” he gestures back the screen. “I’m not that dumb. I was just trying to figure out if it would work. How do you even test these things?”</p><p>“How should I know?” Diego says, immediately, scowl back in place. “You should eat something,” he advises.</p><p>“Is there yogurt?”</p><p>Diego turns on his heel and stalks off in the direction of the kitchen without a word. Klaus hurriedly saves the text file as naughty.sh and exits the editor.</p><p>“Change the ulimit to like 30 or less or something,” Diego says, coming back in. He deposits a raspberry yogurt and a spoon in front of Klaus, who blinks at it.</p><p>“The what?” Klaus says, but Diego is abruptly leaving again. “Dude,” Klaus calls, as Diego’s bedroom door shuts.</p><p>Does he seem stressed? Klaus frets. Maybe he does seem stressed. Maybe Diego is stressed about something.</p><p>He opens a terminal and types the help command for ulimit.</p><p>“Processes!” He crows. “Nice. Okay. Like…” tongue stuck out between his teeth, he types out,</p><p>
  <em>ulimit -u 30</em>
</p><p>and hits enter. Limiting the number of processes per user would, in theory, stop a fork bomb from being able to consume <em>all</em> the resources available at least. Maybe it wouldn’t be practical on a bigger machine than a home computer, but it’s a cool idea. Klaus starts typing again.</p><p>
  <em>naugh</em>
</p><p>Oh, jeez. He gets to the <em>t</em> and just can’t type the rest of the file name. Yep, no, he can’t. He can’t risk it fucking up and accidentally destroying Allison’s computer.</p><p>Klaus backspaces for his own peace of mind, and then exits the terminal. Then he peels the lid off of his yogurt; starts to eat. Contemplates whether or not this could count as lunch. Yup! Sure.</p><p> </p><p>For some reason, he sleeps horribly for the rest of the week. Allison catches him up at 2am one morning, alternating between reading the news and researching how to trash databases.</p><p>“What are you doing up?” Allison asks, rubbing her eyes and sticking her head in on him on her way back from the bathroom.</p><p>Klaus minimises his open browser immediately. “Watching pornography,” he blurts.</p><p>Allison stares at him.</p><p>“Gang bangs. You know. With. Women.” Shit. He wants to throw up in his own mouth a little.</p><p>Ben is reclining on the couch, just staring up at the ceiling, looking extra ghostly in the weird screen light. “What the fuck is wrong with you,” he sighs.</p><p>“… Right.”</p><p>Allison beats a hasty retreat, and Klaus lets out a quiet sigh of relief.</p><p> </p><p>“What <em>are</em> you doing on that thing all day?” Ben asks, the next afternoon, when Klaus is sitting right back where he was twelve hours ago. Diego had monopolised the machine for an hour before lunch, and Allison had been on it all morning. Actual morning. Klaus had found himself unaccountably itchy.</p><p>“Learning,” Klaus tells him. “It’s a fun game. I read. I absorb. I become ever so slightly more enlightened.” He wiggles his fingers by his temples to demonstrate the effects.</p><p>“About computers,” Ben says, in the tone of a guy who never really got the appeal of staring at a cathode ray tube display while it told him things about stuff that has no bearing on his existence.</p><p>“Yep,” Klaus nods, absently.</p><p>“Why?” Ben asks, and sidles up behind him.</p><p>“Go away,” Klaus bats his hands at his brother with a frown. “I’m looking at-”</p><p>“You’re not looking at pornography,” Ben says, immediately. “What are you breaking? Why are you looking up how to break stuff? Jesus, is this another prank? Because I don’t think this is going to go down well at <em>all</em>.”</p><p>“No, it’s,” Klaus frets. “It’s not. It’s really boring.”</p><p>“Right,” Ben says, looking at him suddenly. Klaus, sensing danger, changes the subject to something else that’s been bothering him.</p><p>“Do you think something’s up with Diego?”</p><p>“What do you mean?” Ben asks, with a frown.</p><p>“I don’t know, does he seem okay to you? He’s more broody than usual. I mean.” Klaus immediately narrows his eyes at Ben’s pursed mouth, sad eyes, and generally shifty expression. “Ben,” he says. “Beeeeen.”</p><p>“What, shut up, no,” Ben says, far too quickly.</p><p>“<em>Ben</em>,” Klaus crows, turning right around.</p><p>His brother backs away and holds up a warning finger. “Stop it!”</p><p>“What do you know? Have you been being a creepy ghost stalker?” Klaus demands, delighted, following Ben backwards until he ends up going through the couch. “Have you been <em>haunting your brother</em>?”</p><p>“Get <em>lost</em>,” Ben advises, “I’m not a stalker!” He looks shifty as Klaus climbs over the couch, and keeps backing up until he’s up by the wall.</p><p>“Ben, what do I <em>ever</em> ask for,” Klaus croons. “Give me the hot goss on Diegooooo.”</p><p>“That detective lady shot him down,” Ben blurts, and then covers his mouth with his hands.</p><p>Klaus stares.</p><p>“You’re so easy,” he says, kind of half in awe, half disappointed. And then, wait. “Oh, God. Again?”</p><p>“Again?” Ben repeats, sounding incredulous.</p><p>“Urgh,” Klaus throws his hands up. “Oh, well. That makes sense.”</p><p>“How? And! Don’t you dare say anything about me – about me –” Ben tries, scowling.</p><p>“Brother dear. I am <em>the</em> soul of discretion. Should we get him a cake, or something?”</p><p>Ben stares at him. “He would punch you.”</p><p>“Right.” Klaus agrees with his dead brother’s assessment now he thinks about it. “No cake, just secrets,” he nods, grimly.</p><p>Ben narrows his eyes, and Klaus huffs, then turns around and stalks back to the computer. It’s not exactly new news that Diego is after one Detective Eudora Patch, long may she live to serve justice. He kind of hopes that she either gives him a break or Diego gives it a rest, though, before his brother ends up having what Klaus suspects will be a spectacular melt down.</p><p>Klaus taps the browser, kind of worried for a second. Purses his mouth. Huh. Where was he, anyway? Right. Turning off SQL backups.</p><p> </p><p>He realises, when Diego shows up with Luther two days later, looking kind of worse for wear and with an expression like an angry cat, that he probably should have done the thing with the cake. And had, ‘don’t do anything stupid, fucknuts!’ written on it in frosting for good measure.</p><p>In the kitchen, Luther has to mumble out where they’ve been for the past twenty four hours twice before Allison gets it. Even then, Klaus has to just wait for her to repeat it.</p><p>“You’ve been in <em>jail</em>?” Allison kind of yells at him, while he stands awkwardly by the counter.</p><p>“Big whoop, tell me there’s something edible in here,” Diego dismisses, yanking open in the fridge.</p><p>“Wait, what?” Klaus bounds across the room and slams the fridge shut, stares at his brothers. “You were what?” Horrible ideas for what they’ve been up to start crashing through his head. Luther has access to those big bank accounts, Klaus has no doubt; he could post all manner of bail without breaking a sweat, Jesus, what if they have to go to trial, what if-</p><p>“Hey,” Diego says. “Hey, hey, no big. Nobody got arrested, just detained for little while-”</p><p>“<em>Jail</em>?” Allison repeats, folding her arms. Oh, shit. “What the hell for?”</p><p>“Mumble mumble,” Luther tries again. Allison has apparently turned on her Luther-decipher ears though.</p><p>“Obstruction of justice,” she repeats, flatly. “Obstructing what, exactly?”</p><p>“It was Diego’s plan, I was just in the neighbourhood,” Luther cracks against her tone immediately. “He said he had to pick some stuff up! I didn’t know he meant six burglars.”</p><p>“And what did you pick up, Luther,” Diego grinds out, forcing Klaus out of the way and getting back into the fridge. His hard darts out and grabs one of the eggs on the shelf in the door, and he cracks it one handed over his mouth and eats it.</p><p>Luther stares.</p><p>Allison, too used to nonsense like this, pays Diego no mind; just turns to Luther with a pretty bad expression on her face.</p><p>“A car!” Diego crows, after he’s swallowed his mouthful. “He nailed the get away driver. Best thing I’ve seen all week.”</p><p>“You hit someone with a… you know what?” Allison steps back. “You two are ridiculous. Jail? Honestly? What were you <em>thinking</em>?”</p><p>“Hey, I just saved that precinct hours of detective time,” Diego snaps, and Klaus hears, ‘I saved that detective hours of precinct time’ and suddenly it fucking clicks and he’s kind of livid but Diego is still talking. “So what if we had to sit around for 24 hours-”</p><p>“Do <em>not</em> talk to me right now,” Allison snaps, and Diego’s eyes widen in outrage.</p><p>“Eat a dick,” Diego starts, and Luther steps forward, and then weirdly just kind of stands there looking awkward.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Klaus interrupts, hotly, and they all turn and look at him. “Did you seriously fucki-” and then he jumps as he’s interrupted by a loud knock on the door.</p><p>They all abruptly stop talking and glance at each other.</p><p>Allison breaks away first. Diego steps back from the fridge. Luther stands at his back, looking kind of ready to face whatever is about to happen. Klaus walks to the kitchen door frame and sticks his head around until he can see the hallway.</p><p>There’s a bit of mumbling or something for a minute. Klaus tries to listen, but can’t hear anything. And then a noise like some bags being lifted. Plastic bags. Klaus waits.</p><p>“Just through here,” Allison’s voice calls.</p><p>Klaus backs into the kitchen, looks at his brothers. They kind of look at each other for a second, and then back at the door. Allison walks through first, and then steps to the side.</p><p>To reveal…</p><p>“Hey guys,” Vanya waves, hand encumbered by a bag. “Uh.” She looks around.</p><p>“Vanya!” Klaus exclaims, in relief. What else he was expecting, he has no idea. Riot police insisting Diego apologise to Detective Patch and make Luther swear none of it was his idea, he doesn’t know. “It’s Vanya,” he tells everybody.</p><p>“Were you expecting somebody else?” Vanya asks, looking behind her like there might be somebody there.</p><p>“NO,” Diego says loudly.</p><p>“… is that take out?” Luther asks, peering around his brother hopefully.</p><p> </p><p>It is. They get plates. Klaus gets through a whole spring roll before Vanya asks what they’ve all been up to, and then Allison remembers that she’s mad.</p><p>When the yelling starts up Klaus retreats immediately to his room; tries to tune them out.</p><p>… They shut up eventually.</p><p> </p><p>For the rest of the week, Klaus doesn’t get much sleep. On Thursday at 5am, he thinks: Oh. Great. This time of day. <em>Again</em>.</p><p>God damn it.</p><p>He gets out of bed, gets dressed and smokes three cigarettes on the bus on his way to the Academy.</p><p>It’s not until he sits down in the chair by the tape player that he realises the cassettes he stacked up here look like they’ve been moved.</p><p>He looks around. His post-it notes are still on the shelves. There’s a bit of dust gathering around the computer keyboard.</p><p>So… Luther or Five have been in here? Five hasn’t been around for ages, as far as Klaus knows. Luther then, he figures, and wonders what on earth he was doing that for. Maybe he saw the room was open, just wanted to know what was on the tapes.</p><p>Klaus leaves it, sets up the next one. He’s almost up to 2016 now. He has very little idea of what he was up to three years ago. It was about a year before Dad’s funeral. He’d been waking up in ambulances for about six months straight, and footing the bill right back to the academy.</p><p>He thinks about all the technicians he got to kind of know.</p><p>Klaus sits in silence, in the dark, thinking about the fact that he doesn’t even remember any of their names.</p><p>The TV stutters to life, and then Ben’s face is right up against the screen, saying, “what are you doing <em>here</em>?” - and Klaus actually starts, which is fucking stupid.</p><p>“Hey,” he manages, when he’s finished flailing. “Did you come over on the bus? I haven’t seen you since Tuesday.”</p><p>“Nah, I’ve been following the guy who owns the corner shop down the road. Did you know he races pigeons?”</p><p>“The one that still sells menthols?”</p><p>“Yeah! He has the favourite one called Gus who raced the English channel once.”</p><p>“… are you sure that’s true?” Klaus queries, not wanting to be a kill joy, but. Like. The English channel is a lot farther away than, say, New Jersey. That he might have believed.</p><p>“Definitely, he has like a British sounding ‘coo’?” Ben says, and then makes a weird noise that might be supposed to be a pigeon, Klaus isn’t sure.</p><p>They dick about for five minutes, cooing at each other in stupid accents, before Ben says, “seriously, what are you doing here?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Klaus decides. “It was open, so. Wanna ride the bus home with me? I can be the crazy guy talking to myself, you know, pretend I’m on drugs.”</p><p>Ben stares at him like he’s not hilarious, and then says, “yeah, okay.”</p><p>Klaus leaves without watching anything else.</p><p> </p><p>He doesn’t go back to the Academy again. Fuck it. He hasn’t looked on that computer in weeks. He doesn’t need to know. Or do anything. Or care. It was around long before he ever saw it, and it’s not like Luther or Five won’t find it at some point and they’ll definitely know what to do.</p><p> </p><p>Klaus spends a week doing his nails, practising helping Ben recite soliloquies through Diego’s car radio, and making jelly, because that’s his latest life skill and it is <em>awesome</em>.</p><p>“Oh, for fucks sake,” Diego says, loud enough to hear from the kitchen. Klaus puts down his unicorn mould and sticks his head in to see Diego at the computer, where he’s frantically tapping out a response to something.</p><p>“What’s up?” Klaus enquires. Diego ignores him, and then abruptly stands up and goes to his bedroom. Klaus wanders over to see what’s on the screen.</p><p>Diego has no sense of privacy, apparently. Sitting there, open, is an email from Luther. It’s short and full of typos. Klaus frowns at it in an attempt to decipher some meaning.</p><p>Diego stomps back in with a jacket on, shoulders him out of the way and logs out of his inbox. “Back later,” he informs Klaus, and promptly leaves.</p><p>Klaus logs into his own and decides to send Luther a heads up, in case Diego is heading over to rip him a new one.</p><p>When he’s finished, he notes with guilt that he has an empty draft waiting to go to Five. There’s been a perturbing message waiting in his inbox for a few days and he’s been too chicken shit to respond.</p><p>FROM: WhiteViolinFan<br/>
Klaus,<br/>
I’ll be back next week. In one respect I found nothing of note. In another ‘nothing’ was of disturbing synchronicity.<br/>
Blood of the covenant and all that. I’m resolved not to trouble Luther with this discovery.<br/>
I despair of your ongoing commitment to belittling your achievements this year.<br/>
Five</p><p>Alright. Klaus types up what is, in his opinion, an extremely lame response.</p><p>TO: WhiteViolinFan<br/>
you dont have to tell me im a miracle. what did you find fam? thoughts on the ladies that surprise spawned us havent changed. i covenant the fuck out of you.<br/>
miss you give me the hot goss when youre back in town.</p><p>He logs off and goes to bed, tries to forget about it all.</p><p> </p><p>And then Diego calls, at ass o’clock in the morning.</p><p>To let them know that Luther is in a hospital, of all places. As a <em>patient</em>. Who needs medical care. At a <em>hospital</em>.</p><p>It’s not a call Klaus has ever really expected to get and he takes a while to wake up to it. As soon as the essential fact gets through to his brain, Klaus hollers to wake Allison. He’s expecting her to be pissed at him, but she’s with him strangely fast, like she wasn’t sleeping. Klaus tilts the handset so that they can both share the phone.</p><p>Distressingly, if Diego’s tone is to be believed (he is <em>saying</em> words like, ‘the fucking idiot will be fine’ on repeat), then Luther is kind of in deep shit.</p><p>Luther’s lost a lot of blood, and because of the whole ape fuckery affecting his <em>genetic make-up</em>, he can’t have any from donor bags. He’s going to be unconscious for a while, and then when he wakes up he’s in for another 72 hours, at least.</p><p>As they take in the clipped information, Allison grows so ashen that Klaus is reminded, horribly, of the time that <em>she</em> lost a crap ton of blood, and he determinedly doesn’t think about what’s happened to Luther, whether he’s had his throat cut, why Diego isn’t telling them anything specific.</p><p>When Allison doesn’t push for an explanation, either, Klaus thinks that they’re definitely all freaking out. Klaus also thinks that feeling detached from reality <em>sober</em> is actually a shit ton scarier than it is when you’re on drugs.</p><p> </p><p>They take a cab to the hospital, Klaus and Allison. Klaus fucking hates hospitals.</p><p>He ignores every thought of seeing Luther standing over himself, while Klaus has to pretend he’s not there, pretend he doesn’t know that another brother is going to be dead soon.</p><p>He ignores the panic about visiting somewhere with a fuckton of confused dead folks who are probably going to want stuff.</p><p>It doesn’t actually matter, because he can’t really properly remember the visit.</p><p>He remembers the second.</p><p>And then the third.</p><p>And the sitting around while Luther is unconscious, and the lump that is Luther completely covered by blankets, and the other lump behind his sternum, and there’s a forth and a fifth visit and four more after that.</p><p>And then Luther wakes up, and they’re kicked out of the hospital, and Diego is mad about that, and Allison yells at Diego about something, and then Luther’s discharged and, and then it’s a couple of weeks later, and Klaus waits for someone to say something, or a penny to drop, or <em>something</em>, but it... doesn’t.</p><p>Maybe it’s the recent fog around his head, or maybe it’s the weird way time keeps skipping at the moment, but.</p><p>Everybody just. Carries on like usual. And Klaus… should be fine with that. Because it’s just one more thing that they don’t talk about.</p><p> </p><p>He tries walking. Tries to match the numbers on his goal sheet. Goals are important.</p><p> </p><p>After another long walk around the park, Klaus gets back to Allison’s feeling kind of exhausted.</p><p>He finds his sister staring at her computer.</p><p>There’s a little window open.</p><p>Klaus blinks, and suddenly the world snaps back into colour.</p><p>His eyes focus, his heart is beating a little fast and there might be the start of a little bit of sweat on his palms.</p><p>“Oh, fuck,” Klaus says.</p><p>“I had file extensions turned off,” Allison says, still looking at the screen, sounding kind of blank. “Uh. I guess I just double clicked it.”</p><p>
  <em>naughty.sh</em>
</p><p>Oh, <em>fuck</em>.</p><p>“I mean,” Klaus tries, feeling like he’s just woken up. “Hey! It could have been worse. Diego could have <em>not</em> told me to limit user processes.”</p><p>“Did he? Could you just… not leave files like that lying around?” Allison says. “Please?”</p><p>“Sure,” Klaus tells her. “I completely get why you went to have a peek, by the way. I’ve admired your transformative works for some time. Very meta. Luther and Diego sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-L-M-N-O-P.”</p><p>Allison blinks at him.</p><p>Klaus blinks right back.</p><p>Allison narrows her eyes.</p><p>Klaus affects a cough, except it sounds kind of like <em>mermen in Hawaii</em>.</p><p>They observe each other for a long minute, while Klaus remembers what it feels like to have a conversation about anything other than depressing or avoidant bullshit.</p><p>“I’m going to let that go,” Allison tells him. She gets out of her chair, like she’s going to leave.</p><p>Klaus bites his lip. “I won’t do it again?” He tries.</p><p>Allison pauses on her way to the door.</p><p>“It’s fine,” she says. And then, in a completely different tone, “isn’t it weird how it’s December already?” And then she hesitates, like she wants to say something else, and Klaus waits, kind of desperately hoping for something, anything else.</p><p>It doesn’t come.</p><p>Allison leaves.</p><p>Klaus is alone in a room with a computer having a miniature meltdown because of a one line file he wrote as a test.</p><p>He looks at the screen.</p><p>
  <em>Bash: fork: retry: No child processes</em>
</p><p>What was that word Five used in his email? Synchronicity. Or… maybe Klaus is just reading into things. Or maybe he just feels like he’s just now woken up from a three and a half week daze.</p><p>“You need a reboot,” he says, to the computer.</p><p>Shit.</p><p> </p><p>He has no idea if his siblings have any investment in Christmas these days, but Klaus knows what he’s going to get for himself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Soundcheck</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hey,” Klaus yells, kicking the front door of the academy shut behind him. “Hey. Hey, hey.”</p>
<p>He traipses through the hallway and gets all the way to the kitchen without seeing anybody.</p>
<p>“Hi,” he hollers. “Hello, hi, howdy, aloha. Hey, now. Heeeeeey now! Don’t dream it’s ove-,” he stops abruptly as he’s shoved rather hard into the table.</p>
<p>The pile of packaged muffins he’s carrying luckily lands the correct way up.</p>
<p>“Oof,” Klaus exhales, and then he lets his bounty go and spins to face the culprit. And grabs him around the waist, and picks him up for a cuddle.</p>
<p>“Get the hell-” Five starts, smacking him, “-off of me,” he finishes, half way across the room.</p>
<p>God-fucking Christ, he’s missed Five. It’s been <em>months</em>.</p>
<p>“Welcome back,” Klaus tells him, trying not to gush. “Did you have a fun on your gallivants?”</p>
<p>“No,” Five says, shortly. Klaus blinks. “Do you know what else wasn’t fun?”</p>
<p>“Being a grumpy old man?” Klaus shrugs.</p>
<p>“Coming back to an empty house.” Five fixes him with a glare. Oh. “Why was this house empty when I got back, Klaus?”</p>
<p>Great, Klaus feels his insides shrivelling at the very mention of the-thing-nobody-else-is-talking-about. “I don’t know what happened, nobody tells me shit,” Klaus responds to that, curt. It’s going to have to be enough. And – “Where is Luther, anyway? Be bothered to come and say hi?” He twirls around as though their brother might materialise. Five’s expression turns even more sour.</p>
<p>“I brought muffins,” Klaus decides to barrel on, albeit somewhat unnecessarily because they’re now strewn across the table in full view. “Muffins of happiness. Muffins of joy. Muffins of-” Five disappears in a flash of blue. “-blessed pecan and cinnamon spicy stuff.” Klaus finishes, not perturbed. “Muffins of <em>brotherhood</em>!” He yells, hoping Five can still hear him.</p>
<p>There’s a long while of nothing. Figuring Five will be back at some point, the empty space until then being his time to monopolise, Klaus arranges the muffins in a circle around the table; entertains himself by imagining them doing a ritualistic conjuring.</p>
<p>Of what? Easy.</p>
<p>“Oh Ben,” he squeaks, under his breath, making one of the muffins dance a little. “Appear unto us, o’ spectre of doom and gloom and super duper gelled hair.”</p>
<p>Ben is not actually around, but if he shows up now Klaus is going to… actually. Probably explode with joy.</p>
<p>“We summon you, oh great overlord Ben,” he says, in a different squeak, making a different muffin dance. “Bestow upon us your hooded visage! Teach us how to haunt our siblings!” He moves around the circle. “Ben! Ben! Ben!” Another two muffins are made to squeak, as they wobble to and fro, ostensibly chanting to get Ben’s ass in the building. It feels like the kind of day when his powers might kind of do what he wants them to, why not try it out. Let Ben show up and say things like ‘no, it was definitely all you! I have no idea how this happened!’… etc.</p>
<p>“What the hell are you doing now?” Asks Five – out of fucking nowhere. So he’s apparently back in the kitchen.</p>
<p>One day, Klaus realises abruptly and uncomfortably, Five is going to die and appear out of nowhere just like that, and Klaus isn’t even going to realise he’s dead.</p>
<p>He doesn’t want to deal with that thought at all, and dodges it so hard he might be at risk of mental whiplash.</p>
<p>“When you’re dead, you have to wear a bell,” is what comes out of his mouth while that’s going on.</p>
<p>Immediately, Five snaps, “Shut <em>up</em>.”</p>
<p>Right.</p>
<p>Klaus breathes out hard through his nose.</p>
<p>“So?” He says, “Where <em>is</em> little Luther?”</p>
<p>“<em>Little</em> Luther is coming to join us,” Five confirms, “and don’t call him that. And don’t be an asshole to him. And don’t.” He stops talking, finger outstretched and shaking a little, at Klaus, who blinks.</p>
<p>“Wait. Me,” he confirms just to be completely sure. “<em>Me</em>, don’t be an asshole to <em>Luther</em>?”</p>
<p>“I’m just warning you,” Five says, kind of ominously.</p>
<p>“… right,” Klaus returns, not following at all.</p>
<p>Five’s scowl deepens, and he folds his arms across his chest. Klaus started out kind of super stoked to see him. Now, he kind of isn’t in the mood to ask him about his birth-Mom-related travels any more.</p>
<p>He returns to the muffins. “Oh Ben,” Klaus says in a falsetto, staring at Five as he starts moving another muffin. “When you appear unto us, <em>you</em> can’t be an asshole either. Boo hiss. Ben, Ben.”</p>
<p>Five’s scowl deepens even further, which is apparently possible. “Could you please stop bringing Ben into this-” he grinds out, and then there’s a sudden burst of loud static, and then a bunch more sound from above the fridge, which is incidentally where somebody appears to have left an old radio set.</p>
<p>“What a rogue and peasant slave am I!” blasts forth from the speakers. Five has a carving knife from the block on the counter in his hand immediately, stance alarmingly alert.</p>
<p>Oh, now he shows up. “Wheeeeeee!” Klaus waves two muffins in mock celebration. “Our hero! Our monstrous player!”</p>
<p>“You’re a monstrous player!” The radio blasts, affronted, and then Luther’s voice comes from the doorway and says,</p>
<p>“Holy shit,” and Klaus has enough time to think that he doesn’t actually recall the last time he heard Luther curse with such enthusiasm, so that’s nice, and also Five still looks scarily armed and on guard, and the radio says,</p>
<p>“You’re a <em>scullion</em>,” in Ben’s most dulcet tone. Klaus remembering the joke, yells,</p>
<p>“The son of a dear father murdered!” On auto-pilot, whilst waving muffins, and Five splutters,</p>
<p>“What…. is that... <em>Hamlet</em>?” and sounds kind of desperate, but Klaus might be imagining that.</p>
<p>“Yes! Two hundred points to the little guy!” Klaus cheers, instead of acknowledging anything else. “Ben’s getting it completely wrong though,” he sneers at the radio. Ben couldn’t be bothered to remember anything the other week, either.</p>
<p>“What does Hamlet have to do with… why… is…” Luther is staring at the radio.</p>
<p>“Oh. Hi… guys,” says the radio, and then Klaus remembers all of a sudden that Ben hasn’t necessarily done this with an audience that isn’t Diego or Allison before.</p>
<p>Also he might never have mentioned it to Luther or Five.</p>
<p>He adopts an announcer voice in order to introduce everything and do it in a kind of stupid way rather than one that involves feelings of any kind.</p>
<p>“Ben, summoned by muffins-”</p>
<p>“<em>Stop doing that</em>,” Five hisses at him, suddenly, sounding distressed. “Is that… is that really Ben?”</p>
<p>“… hi,” the radio says, again, and then there’s another burst of static. And then it’s quiet.</p>
<p>Klaus purses his lips. He can’t see Ben anywhere, probably because he’s hiding or something. (Because every now and again he remembers that he doesn’t <em>do</em> emotional shit, like accidentally riding with Klaus and Diego to family therapy, or seeing Klaus’ diary when he lurks behind him on the couch, or dealing with the looks on Luther and Five’s faces when they remember that he’s around all the fucking time even if they don’t see him… thanks bro.) Great.</p>
<p>“So.” Klaus picks up a muffin, puts on a smile. “I brought snacks.”</p>
<p>Jesus Christ. They’re both still staring at the radio.</p>
<p>Ben’s gone, hasn’t he. For sure.</p>
<p>“Sugar laden proper-full-fat muffin snacks, not the bran shit Diego eats,” Klaus carries on, to fill the silence. “Well. Allison eats them too, sometimes. I don’t know <em>why</em>, they’re gross. You know people make muffins out of zucchini, too? How wrong is that?”</p>
<p>Klaus gives them another minute, and is suddenly viscerally reminded of all the times he’s been asked to summon dead people like it’s super fun, and all the years he refrained from talking about Ben out of politeness, and all the years Dad refused to answer to anything but ‘the Monocle’ and relatedly made Klaus answer to ‘the Séance’, and then all the times he’s talked about Ben and been told to shut up like he’s not around <em>all the fucking time</em> <em>just like the rest of his asshole siblings</em>.</p>
<p>“Cool,” Klaus imparts to the room at large, “I made a whole a trip over here, to see you guys! <em>A</em><em>nd</em> brought muffins! But if that’s not of interest, enjoy your respective days and I’ll just fuck right off again.” Neither of them say anything. Klaus, internally screaming, <em>you guys are fucking whack jobs!</em>, says, out loud, “toodles, mi fam,” and turns on his heel to stalk back out down the hallway.</p>
<p>God. Fuck.</p>
<p>That went sideways pretty fast, even for them. He can’t really even pinpoint why his feelings are so hurt. Klaus apparently still doesn’t do very well with the reminder that they still don’t believe him. Believe <em>in</em> him, maybe? He doesn’t know.</p>
<p>He makes his way to the front door via irrational detour. Klaus thinks he’s leaving, and then he’s going past Pogo’s lab and apparently he can’t help but duck his head in.</p>
<p>He’s immediately surprised to find it a complete mess. Not at all how he left it.</p>
<p>The piles of cassettes he left by the TV set are toppled and strewn across the floor, and the shelves where he’d put the boring stuff he didn’t want to watch are half empty.</p>
<p>The computer desk is the only thing that looks like it hasn’t been kicked.</p>
<p>“What were you doing with these?” Ben says, appearing in the room more or less out of nowhere. Klaus turns to look at him, and sees him staring at the pile of tapes by the TV set. “You never actually explained.”</p>
<p>What the hell anybody else wants with old security footage now, Klaus does not know. They could have tidied up, though, instead of just leaving it in this ridiculous state.</p>
<p>“Thanks for running off back there,” Klaus tells him kind of absently, still looking around. “I always appreciate the reminder that everybody thinks I’m a liar and forgets that you’re a tool just because you died.”</p>
<p>Ben gives him a filthy look. “Way to sound like a complete dick,” he remands.</p>
<p>Klaus startles and plays the last couple of sentences back in his head. Then he sighs, draws his hands up over his eyes, and then walks to the nearest wall and thunks his forehead against it, and groans.</p>
<p>“Any particular reason you’re being a grade-a asshole?” Ben enquires.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Klaus says into the wall, instead of answering.</p>
<p>“Oh?” Ben says, in the tone he usually adopts when he’s folding his arms and looking pissed off at Klaus.</p>
<p>Klaus can’t see him because he’s busy keeping his eyes shut. He swallows down the urge to say something mean again, and tries to detach from the barrage of angry thoughts forming themselves, tries to separate himself from that unhelpful noise.</p>
<p>Inhale. Exhale.</p>
<p>“Six weeks ago, I thought Luther would be dead too, just like you,” Klaus says, on his fifth exhale. “And I’d have to pretend to ignore <em>him</em> whenever anybody else was around, too, just like you. And everybody’s acting like nothing happened, and apparently I definitely can’t ever mention the fact that I can see you even though that’s been my entire fucking party line since <em>my entire fucking life</em>. And it’s not <em>fucking fair</em>.” As he finishes, he hears a noise like a stumble backwards, and he rubs at his eyes and steadies himself before he turns around, because if he’s made Ben corporeal again by accident he needs a real minute here.</p>
<p>When he turns and blinks, two brothers are staring at him. Ben, mouth kind of open, looking sort of almost… guilty?</p>
<p>And… Five.</p>
<p>Five is giving him a considering look. “You weren’t kidding,” he says. “You really don’t hear me when I jump.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean,” Klaus asks, thinking wildly. “Oh,” he remembers suddenly. “That bell comment?”</p>
<p>“Who were you talking to?” Five asks him, instead of answering.</p>
<p>Klaus doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. “What are you doing in here?” He asks.</p>
<p>“You know that to people who aren’t you, dead people are just that?” Five informs him, like Klaus had no idea. “The idea that we should all accommodate your feelings when processing the world according to how it is to all the rest of us is ludicrous. Like it or not, that’s your burden, Klaus.”</p>
<p>Klaus stares at him.</p>
<p>Five stares right back.</p>
<p>Five starts to say something like, “but that doesn’t mean-” but Klaus speaks over him immediately with, “if Ben were in this room, right now,” and Five stops and Ben looks like he really doesn’t want to hear what comes out of Klaus’ mouth next – an expression with which he is absolutely familiar at this point in his life; “would you care?”</p>
<p>“Jesus,” Ben breathes, and looks away.</p>
<p>“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I would care,” Five says at once. “But he never could be, not in the same way that I am and you are.”</p>
<p>“I fucking – last year, at the theatre, I – he was there, you fucking saw him –” Klaus starts in disbelief, while Ben walks out of his peripheral vision.</p>
<p>“If knowing that the ghost of my brother exists was the same as having him here, I wouldn’t have given a god damn shit about the apocalypse and neither would you, and neither would anybody,” Five tells him. “Are you going to let me keep speaking?”</p>
<p>Klaus’ eyes flicker to look for Ben, but he’s just out of sight, seemingly on purpose. He forgets to tell Five no.</p>
<p>“I’d die to bring Ben back,” Five continues, like he’s talking about what he wants for lunch or something else of far less significance than he is. “The same way I’d die to keep you alive. Ben exists now for you, not for us. That doesn’t mean we don’t care. Or believe you. Or whatever it is that you think.”</p>
<p>“… I think I’m just. Gonna go back to Allison's,” Klaus manages, after a long minute of not knowing what the fucking hell to say to that.</p>
<p>On his way to the door, Five reaches out and touches his arm. It’s so uncharacteristic of his brother that Klaus stutters to an abrupt halt, stares at the point of contact.</p>
<p>“And don’t worry about Luther. We discussed it. It’s not going to happen again,” Five tells him, expression intense.</p>
<p>“Right,” Klaus agrees, and pulls at the jacket he never got around to taking off. “Bye, Five,” he tells him. “This was fun,” he tells the flash of blue that immediately follows up. Cool cool. Klaus won’t let the door get him on his way out.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s still feeling sore about everything, sitting on the bus, alone and half way through his second cigarette when he realises what Five had basically said there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Klaus makes it back to Allison's without crying or screaming or anything like that. He has to walk twice around the block after he’s disembarked from the bus just to shake it out of his system, but he does it and it feels like an accomplishment. He trudges back and finds his sister-landlady in the kitchen, putting groceries away.</p>
<p>“Hey,” she calls, while he gets stuck with his laces, trying to kick his shoes at the rack inside the door. Fiddly little assholes. “How was the visit?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, fine,” Klaus calls back. He kicks hard and his shoe flies under the rack. Klaus leaves it, ducks his head into the kitchen and waves. “Short.”</p>
<p>“A parcel came for you while you were out,” Allison tells him. “If it’s the pant suit you ordered for Vanya’s show, I need to see it ASAP.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t ordered anything else,” Klaus shrugs. “I could be persuaded to try it on right the fuck now. <em>If</em> you could kindly confirm that there was that yoghurt with the big pieces of strawberries in it in this haul.” He gestures to the empty grocery bags.</p>
<p>Allison grabs at a carton out of the fridge immediately. “Parcel’s on your bed,” she tells him. “Eat this after.”</p>
<p>Klaus rolls his eyes. “I don’t spill <em>all</em> my food,” he says, knowing exactly what she’s getting at, “you’re being dramatic.”</p>
<p>“I hope the green is exactly how it looked in print,” Allison responds, visibly excited. Klaus isn’t getting that yoghurt.</p>
<p>He retreats to his bedroom where an unopened parcel is sitting and waiting for him. Upon opening, it’s revealed to be indeed the pant suit that he’d ordered for the express purpose of going to Vanya’s first ever big family-are-all-invited concert. She’d emailed about it and got them comps and everything. It’s a Big Deal.</p>
<p>The pant suit is kind of perfect. Klaus had been slightly concerned over the height but it works out once he’s in heels.</p>
<p>“That colour is stunning,” Allison tells him, after she’s twirled him around in the sitting room a couple of times. “I’m so excited. I haven’t been to a concert in years. Vanya keeps trying to tell me that this isn’t a big deal, you know.”</p>
<p>“Oh, she’s ridiculous,” Klaus says, fondly.</p>
<p>“You’re going to be the tallest apart from Luther,” Allison says, absently. “I need to get over to the academy and check what he’s wearing. I already know Five will be in a suit.”</p>
<p>“Allison,” Klaus starts.</p>
<p>“I’ll have to think about how to manage Diego. Once I know what the rest of us will be wearing I can plan him and then adjust what I end up in based on that.”</p>
<p>“Allison,” Klaus repeats.</p>
<p>“I mean, I’m not expecting any attention, people go to David Geffen for the music, not to oogle people in the orchestra seats. But it never hurts to be prepared.”</p>
<p>“Allison,” Klaus kind of laughs, bad morning forgotten.</p>
<p>“It’s just,” Allison says. “Klaus! It’s our first outing together in years. I want us to look good for it. And for Vanya.”</p>
<p>“That’s super sweet,” Klaus tells her. “We’ll kill the red carpet.”</p>
<p>“There isn’t a red carpet?” Allison tries. Klaus waves her off, continues,</p>
<p>“Vanya will definitely kill it. I can’t wait.”</p>
<p>“I just want it to. I don’t know. It feels like the start of something new,” Allison says, with a smile. “We’re in…. Control, of it, this time. It feels more positive, you know? We’re not hurting anybody, we’re just. Us.”</p>
<p>Unbeknown to Allison, Klaus immediately thinks back to a nasty little forum sitting on a server somewhere accessible from Pogo’s lab.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he agrees wholeheartedly, “and so we should be.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Vanya is playing at the mother fucking Philharmonic. Klaus is so, so, so proud.</p>
<p>The Five remaining Hargreeves siblings rock up together. It’s their first family outing in what feels like forever. Klaus kind of expects flashbacks to being kids, that weird pressure to have every hair in place, to look happy for other people, to be that cute smartass that he isn’t any more, but it’s weirdly nice. They’re all varying degrees of dressed up – dressed down, even, and they all look so smart and cute and handsome that Klaus wants to hang off of all of them.</p>
<p>Absolutely nobody pays them any attention as they fill in to their complementary seats.</p>
<p>Klaus watches in awe.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She’s been playing all her life – Klaus knows this objectively. He’s <em>heard</em> her play a bunch, and she obviously <em>must</em> be good to be playing in that particular seat up in this joint – but. Vanya fucking kills it on the stage, Klaus realises.</p>
<p>He feels the music like it’s a cool breeze. He’s enraptured. So is everybody else. Klaus can’t tear his eyes away for long but he catches glimpses of his siblings faces and they look exactly like he feels, and when the music ends he mostly feels a sense of missing out on something, and maybe like he should have known his sister better, and – and – it’s something else entirely.</p>
<p>It’s a real moment.</p>
<p>After the concert is over and they’ve left their seats and are waiting for their sister near the exit she pointed them to, it’s Five who greets Vanya first when she appears, with an elbow offering, which she takes looking kind of uncertain.</p>
<p>“That was stunning,” he says, matter of fact.</p>
<p>Any tension around them breaks into something easier, and one by one they tell Vanya how amazing her performance was, how talented she is. Various other people come and give Vanya a pat or a handshake but Five stays at her side, and Diego side-eyes them all, and Klaus watches her look quietly overwhelmed like she hadn’t just performed in front of a huge crowd with a spotlight on her. Like this is somehow scarier.</p>
<p>They fawn and socialise for a while and Klaus thinks he sees a couple of cameras, but Allison is actually too busy beaming and complimenting Vanya to pay them any attention.</p>
<p>“Guys,” Vanya says, eventually. “It’s fine. We can go.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Five says. “Griddys?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The following morning, Klaus feels untethered.</p>
<p>He realises that he feels like another chunk is done – another slice of life has been completed, another block of time where he’s made good choices and been healthy; it feels almost arbitrary in the amount that he does this, but this time it loops back to eight months ago, when Diego dropped a big fat heavy book in his lap and told him to go do a learn.</p>
<p>It feels a lot like change.</p>
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